GOVT BLASTED FOR INCREASING TAXES

EZULWINI – Robbing the poor to pay the rich. Key stakeholders of the Swazi economy are strongly of the view that this is what Finance Minister Martin Dlamini’s E21.8 billion budget for the 2018/19 financial year represents.

Despite assurances to reduce the country’s wage bill, use loans efficiently, monitor and control unnecessary and wishful expenditure, the budget tabled by Dlamini received a barrage of criticism from the youth, private sector, legislators, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and academia during the post budget seminar convened at Happy Valley Hotel yesterday.

The common stance among panellists who had been invited to make presentations on behalf of their communities was to the effect that Dlamini hiked taxes to cater for government expenditure without clearly outlined strategies as to how marginalised groups such as the unemployed populace and disabled community would ultimately benefit from the increased revenue projections.

Dlamini’s budget, which has been forecasted to increase by two per cent to E16.9 billion through the collection of license fees from mobile companies, increasing Value Added Tax (VAT) from 14 per cent to 15 per cent, imposition of a levy on motor vehicles imported from outside the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), increasing the fuel rate and hiking user fees was viewed as only empowering the rich through the provision of business opportunities that the state presents to already high income generating establishments.

“The proposed revenues will take us to a regressive regime. Government will be taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich through capital projects,” argued University of Swaziland (UNISWA) Department of Economics Lecturer Sanele Sibiya.
To justify how government’s decision to increase taxes as a core strategy to improve revenue was folly, he quoted former British Statesman Winston Churchill, who once said; “For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

Sibiya recommended that on the basis of the fact that a large margin of the Swazi populace lives below the poverty datum line, there ought to be an addition on zero rated goods to cushion the effect that the VAT increase will have on the poor.

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