POOR BUDGET PRIORITISATION COSTING ESWATINI ECONOMY

MBABANE – Poor prioritisation when collating the budget, over-regulation and the lack of innovation, especially in the financial services sector, is what stifles the Eswatini economy.

These were some of the observations made by a number of speakers during the conference on Financial Innovation convened at the Royal Villas yesterday.

 Allocation

The co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of NybSys, Moshtaq Ahmed, advised that there was an urgent need to improve allocation on projects that will have positive spinoffs for the economy. He recommended that investing in projects that would foster economic growth, such as upgrading government systems and software to promote efficient service delivery.

“In Eswatini, we tend to focus on building more roads and other infrastructure that does not add much value to the economy, yet our systems were last updated about a decade ago,” said Ahmed.

The holder of a Masters in IT System Management from Harvard University’, advised that to mutate the kingdom into what ‘smart country’ like Dubai in line with the vision to become a First world country by 2022, there needed to be a number of things that should be changed.

He said the core pillars which would change the country into a smart country for the better, there ought to be smart citizens, smart IDs and a smart government among other factors. Ahmed explained that through the upgrading of the current identity documents into smart IDs would ease the process of accessing a number of services and also help in the provision of better services.

Smart IDs can be used for paying parking bays, transport and penalties, among other services.
“The introduction of smart IDs alone for the 800 000 emaswati would reduce costs by up to 2.5 per cent,” Ahmed projected.

He said through investing in technological platforms, which allow for electronic payments, would also help make the Central Bank of Eswatini not print much money because printing money on its own is expensive.
Shedding light on what he meant through a smart government, Ahmed said services offered by government should also be accessed electronically.

Innovation

“There is no reason why Treasury cannot accept EFT’s (Electronic Funds Transfer). The police can do everything but cannot accept card payments. We just need an innovation push to turn the economy around,” Ahmed noted.
Eswatini Communications Commission (ESCCOM) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mvilawemphi Dlamini said there was an urgent need to develop a strategy towards a smart kingdom.

“We need to introspect as to why we have more churches than schools, which have also not been developed much over the years. We need to ask ourselves why we are net consumers not producers as a country,” wondered Dlamini.
Governor of the Central Bank of Eswatini Majozi Sithole said the bank had noted the need for a revision of policies to accommodate innovation of the modern world.

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