GOVT EMULATES 2010 STRATEGY

MBABANE – Has Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg replicated some of the measures which were used to revitalise the economy in the 2010 national budget.

The national budget that was delivered by then Minister of Finance, Majozi Sithole, called upon all ministries to reduce their budgets by 14 per cent. In the same vein, Rijkenberg also called upon ministries to cut their budgets by 10 per cent. 
But an exception was made for the ministries of health and education, which also experienced a raise in their allocations as well in the E21 billion budget delivered last Wednesday.

priority

This year government allocated E2.2 billion to the ministry of health to implement priority programmes compared to E2 billion, which was allocated last year. This was an increase of 16 per cent. 
While doing that, Sithole emphasised that the ministries of health and education had to strive to improve efficiency of use of their existing resources before they bid for more.

Sithole had said the year ought to be viewed as abnormal for the country because it had been hit by the global economic crisis with revenue declining to unprecedented levels.

Similarly, Rijkenberg also strongly emphasised on the importance of prioritisation.
At the time, the country was forced to reduce its national expenditure by 14 per cent, following the 62 per cent decline in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) revenue.

More than 60 per cent of the country’s national revenue came from SACU.
However, this time around only 34 per cent is anticipated to fund the budget, which speaks volumes to the government’s strategy to gradually stop over-reliance on SACU receipts. 

This was at a time when the Kingdom was in the process of meeting its constitutional obligation of introducing Free Primary Education (FPE).
This entailed providing free education for grades I to II in 2010, and grades I, II and III in 2011.

Sikelela Dlamini, Secretary General of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers (SNAT) had called upon the minister of finance, Rijkenberg, to increase the allocation for the education sector in order to discard the disparity between urban and rural schools.
Indeed, government set aside an allocation of E3.5 billion to the Education and Training sector to implement priority programmes. This is a 7.5 per cent increase on 2018/19.

schools

The unionist teacher had said the difference was brought about by lack of facilities in some schools while others had all the teaching aids necessary for a pupil to grasp lessons. 
“Education is the largest and essential sector as it is very important for skills development in the country. We therefore, need a better allocation to meet all the desired targets which include engaging in research,” Dlamini said.

He said the budget allocation should meet the standards set by international organisations as education was moving in that direction.
Last year, government allocated E3.3 billion for the Ministry of Education which was 15.7 per cent of the national budget.

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