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A SNOOZE-FEST OF A BUDGET

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THERE is nothing neither strategic nor imaginative about the 2020/21 budget speech. It is the same old tired song of unimaginative policies and faux priorities that will do nothing to activate the Strategic Road map for 2019 -2022.

One was hoping that the budget would provide key investments in areas of the Strategic Road map that have been earmarked to resuscitate the economy.
In the past year, since the ‘new government’ took charge of the sinking ship, our government has failed dismally to take action that will address the key problem that is pulling the rug right underneath this economy, which is uncontrolled and unnecessary spending.


Surprise


It is no surprise that the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) and the Ministry of Health (MoH) have been allocated the biggest share of the budget because they always do and this is what they always get. It is also no surprise that government is emphasizing building a resilient economy through fiscal consolidation because that too is a tune it has been singing since the fiscal crunch in 2010.


The biggest problem facing our economy is government spending, which no minister or power within government has been able to put it in control. Time and time again the Government of Eswatini has prioritised fiscal consolidation and rationalising expenditures but always continues to operate on business as usual with line ministries overshooting their budgets through unaccounted for expenditures that undermine the social and economic development that has been planned for in the National Development Strategy. At the same time parastatals continue to demand their lion’s share out of the G-wallet without associated improvements in implementation of the government policies that are supposed to improve service delivery and the standard of living in Eswatini.


Account


Besides the money that we pay to government through taxes, that in turn the very same government then fails to account for, there is one pot of money that is bleeding the economy profusely yet no one wants to do anything about it. This is the wage bill, which has come about as a result of an ever growing government without any related growth in service delivery and growth of the economy.

The budget speech should now be about how the country intends to fund the wage bill over and above its subventions to the parastatals. It is time to cut and let go to give way for new ideas and an efficient way of doing things. We know that the wage bill is the biggest money pit but our Minister for Finance is banking on the hiring freeze as the winning strategy to control it,


Eswatini needs action and not more new policies and strategies that will keep us moving in circles keeping the country at bay from implementing the current policies. There are key agencies and ministries looting the G-wallet that we all know of and to date no clear or serious action has been taken to put an end to all this crazy spending. The budget that the minister for Finance has tabled solely rests on hope that somehow the economy will pick up and that the Strategic Roadmap will somehow materialise into action. Go through the budget speech in much more detail, you will see that all of the things said and prioritised are exactly what the country has been doing before.


Therefore, rest assured that 2020 will be no different and the country will further spiral into the gutter. In the 2020/21 budget speech, our government was not even so forceful about its revenue mobilisation strategy, which we all know as more tax collection and new sets of taxes for the different sectors of the economy. Doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results is akin to insanity.

Focusing on mopping more money out of the economy will not grow the private sector that government so desperately want to see. Delaying corrective action on how to stop all the unnecessary spending that is killing the economy will keep stagnating growth and widening the fiscal deficits that have become a key item of our national budget.

The budget speech should have focused on the strategic road map making commitments to key economic activities and social supports that would change the game for the Eswatini economy.

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