FUNDING GAPING FINANCIAL HOLES

WITHOUT a proper resuscitation plan, the economy will go belly up. We are trapped between a rock and a hard place, and unfortunately government’s immediate reaction is to squeeze more money out of people and businesses, even if it means cashing in on the last remaining cents in our bank accounts and our under-the-bed savings.

This is the point that needs emphasising that in a fiscal crunch or when the economy is spiralling into a depression, the last thing government should do is make the consumer worse off.

As consumers we have become bailout victims of a government that seems incapable of managing the public purse. The consumer is an easy target for quick money through bogus taxes and other government services user-fees, yet consumers, through their money, provide the fuel that drives the economy to greater production levels. Government needs to understand and respect the fact that consumers are the holy grail of the economy. Without a healthy consumer base, business activities and government have no legitimate reason to exit.

Our government is very good at taking money to spend on short-term and long-term expenditures, of which, since the last fiscal crisis in 2010/2011, have failed to yield proper dividends for the economy at large. What has the National Development Strategy delivered for emaSwati? Nothing but gaping financial holes that emaSwati have to fill with their own personal incomes.

Government has opened gaping financial holes that need filling urgently, to turn the economy into a positive trajectory. These gaping financial holes have been opened by stretching consumer wallets to a point where even the money people use to hide under their beds has simply vanished.

Emerge

On the one hand, government burnt through billions of Emalangeni to emerge among the top economies in terms of flashy five-star hotels, a state-of-the-art airport, among other flashy expenditures, while on the other hand, it chose selective amnesia that Free Primary Education would require real and incremental millions of Emalangeni year on year to sustain it; that our hospitals would still need resources to keep people alive, that the 44 000 civil servants would still be queuing relentlessly at ATMs demanding their monthly salaries, and above all, that the country would still need monthly cash flow to sustain all the government services to keep the economy alive.

If it is not borrowed money, government now keeps itself afloat on the backs of the struggling consumers, that is, you and me and the few businesses that have managed to survive in Eswatini.

What do you think is government’s plan to rescue the economy and correct the financial mess it has made out of the public accounts? It will be new bogus taxes, new blue-books, new driver’s licences, the list goes on and on. Just as well, government will tap into the Motor Vehicle Funds, Public Pension Funds, among other key funds to plaster an already hopeless and gaping wound.

This kind of behaviour has become pathological with our government and without a new and proper plan for the economy that respects both consumers and businesses as the holy grail of the economy, the country will continue to circle around the same issues until the close of the National Development Strategy which was supposed to deliver our First World by 2022.
Forget the usual staged talks about fiscal consolidation supposed to crack a whip on government spending: it simply won’t work without a proper plan on how government can make money without squeezing consumers the little bit they make in this struggling economy. Through the guise of fiscal consolidation, government will save a few Emalangeni here and there, and when it starts to look like we have come out of the dark, it will take the very same money and burn it through useless expenditures that do not improve services in our hospitals, schools, communities and our personal lives.
Can the new legislators get one thing clear: the economy needs people and businesses to have money in their pockets in order to support economic activities that will in turn increase the revenue government receives to spend as it sees fit. It is basic economics that our government needs to come to terms with, and from there it needs to formulate an economic recovery plan that will put consumers and businesses at the centre of the economy. Enough with our government squeezing money out of consumers and businesses to fill its gaping financial holes!

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