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FINANCE MINISTER INDICATING RIGHT, TURNING LEFT

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Why the Minister of Finance Martin Dlamini is indicating right and turning left?


 Over time, in his budget speeches, he preaches a gospel he does not practise. He has often said we must spend wisely, we must not depend on Southern African Customs Union (SACU) receipts and he has often said we cannot spend what we do not have; we should not spend more than we have, we should be fiscally disciplined and prudent, we should spend on priorities that will add value to the national development.


He often says we need to embark on economic activities that have capacity to create jobs and goes on to say the economic sectors that can create jobs are: mining sector, tourism, agriculture and manufacturing.
In previous budget speeches, he said the priority ministries in as far as budgeting is concerned, are agriculture, health and education and never at any given point in time did he suggest that we are nationally threatened and we need more weapons which warranted the increase in military and armed forces budget. Again, all the budget proposals that have been placed before Parliament, health and agriculture have never been a priority, something which is not acceptable as it is misleading and dishonourable.


In practice, we have done diametrically the opposite to what he has been preaching. The minister has also emphasised on the need for food security and embarking on the Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) as a model of economic advancement.
Against this backdrop, the minister continues to submit an over-inflated military and/ or armed forces budget when we are fighting nobody and not threatened at all. There is no plan that seeks to address food security, as all irrigation remains targeted for cash crops that has nothing to do with food security. This is happening despite that government has many idle farms that are not put into productive use to address the food security challenge.


The total number of tons of maize needed to satisfy the country is about 172 170 but we produced only 81 623 tons and we import the difference which is 142 000 tons.
The right thing to do is to grow our own maize from the farms we already have. This would be cheaper and will come in handy to improving the food security goals, particularly because Swaziland is endowed with vast arable lands and several rivers and streams that flow through the country.


Maize alone has several valued by-products, which if properly harnessed have the capacity of creating jobs and producing finished goods. The importation culture is neither economically viable nor sustainable. We need a transformational budget which seeks to prioritise agriculture so that more jobs could be created. Unfortunately this is not the case right now. There is no justification to lower the budget and it is a pity that it is lower than what government agreed  to at Maputo Declaration.

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