Swazi Observer

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PUTTING TOGETHER BUDGET CHALLENGING -RIJKENBERG

By Sabelo Majola | 2019-02-27

Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg has come out to state that putting together the budget speech for the next fiscal year was very challenging.

He was, however, comfortable that they have struck the right balance.

The nation will be glued to their screens and radios for the much anticipated budget speech, which the minister is expected to deliver at around 2:30pm in Parliament today.

“By God’s grace, I’m at peace regarding the speech. It was a big challenge, but I am comfortable that I have struck the right balance,” he said briefly.

This will be Rijkenberg’s first budget speech since he was appointed minister of finance when His Majesty King Mswati III appointed the Ambrose Mandvulo Dlamini-led Cabinet last year November.

One issue that will be of interest to many people is that of the Public Sector Associations (PSAs) which are demanding a 14.4 per cent (CoLA) provision in the national budget.

The PSAs claim that government owes them 14.4 per cent in respect of the cost of living adjustment (CoLA), which was accumulated in the past two financial years.

The CoLA impasse between government and the civil servants started last year in July when government offered to give them a zero per cent increment.

Government stated that it did not have the money to implement the CoLA; hence it offered the zero per cent.

The civil servants did not accept this as a series of strikes and marches followed thereafter.

The Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) also expects government to allocate at least 26 per cent of the national budget to the education sector, because it is the country’s large sector. In the 2017/18 financial year, government allocated an amount of E3.3 billion for the ministry of education while allocating an amount of E2 billion to the ministry of health to implement priority programmes. This budget speech was delivered by then minister of finance Martin ‘Gobizandla’ Dlamini.

When opening the first session of the 11th Parliament, His Majesty said the budget speech allocations should be informed by the funds that the country has in the public purse.

He said in coming up with a fully-financed budget, hard decisions would have to be taken, sacrifices need to be made and unconventional methods of reducing expenditure need to be pursued.

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