Times Of Swaziland: CONCERN OVER LOAD-SHEDDING, SACU COULD DECLINE

CONCERN OVER LOAD-SHEDDING, SACU COULD DECLINE
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Sabelo Majola on 25/01/2023 09:10:00


MBABANE – Local businesses that are sourcing their merchandise from South
Africa (SA) are not spared from the effects of the loadshedding in that country.
Business people have had to dig deep into their pockets to pay for the goods
purchased from SA at the border gate because officials from the Eswatini Revenue
Service (ERS) were detecting erroneous invoices from the business people which
were caused by issues of load-shedding in the neighbouring country.
Load-shedding is an energy utility’s method of reducing demand on the energy
generation system by temporarily switching off the distribution of energy to
certain geographical areas.
Under normal circumstances, the business people simply provide an invoice to the
ERS officials upon arrival at the border gate and that acts as a green light for
them to pass through without having to pay extra costs. Government then takes
the invoices and use them to make monetary claims from the Southern African
Customs Union (SACU), referred to as SACU receipts. It is the money that SACU
member States share annually from the revenue they generate through the
collection of custom duties. The anomaly was revealed by the Federation of 
Eswatini Business Community (FESBC) Hhohho Chairperson Johannes Manikela when
interviewed yesterday.
He said that the load-shedding was so enormous in SA that the invoices were
prone to mistakes due to random power outages and a slow electronic system.
“When making the purchases in SA, we are made to pay in advance for the
merchandise and we receive the invoices once we go there for collection. In
recent times, the invoices are prone to errors due to the random power outages
in SA caused by the load-shedding. When we arrive at the border, they make us
pay for the goods to get a gate pass because the invoices are faulty,” he
said. He highlighted that this was a cause for concern to business people
especially because they were doing everything right from their part but they
were losing money because of the effects of load-shedding in the neighbouring
country.
Advised
He advised that the Ministry of Finance should engage with them so that they
deliberate on the matter and find a lasting solution, especially because it had
implications even on the SACU receipts. “If this anomaly persists, there is a
high chance that the SACU receipts will decline because government will have
many faulty invoices on its disposal and it won’t be able to make the accurate
SACU claims,” he said. Worth Mentioning is that Minister of Finance Neal
Rijkenberg revealed on Monday that the country would get E11.75 billion in SACU
receipts, which is a major increment from the E5.8 billion received in the
previous year. Ministry of Finance Principal Secretary Sizakele Dlamini said the
ministry was not aware of this anomaly. She stated that in such cases where
there was an erroneous invoice the importer may arrange with ERS for a post
declaration while working on having the invoice corrected.
Importers
“However we encourage importers to write to the Ministry of Finance to
officially report these challenges so that the ministry may engage with the
relevant stakeholders to resolve this issue,” she said. According to
information sourced from the government website in SA on energy, the current
bout of load-shedding is related to inadequate national energy supply to meet
demand. This is mainly due to a large amount of unplanned maintenance required
at Eskom’s aging coal-fired power stations. In addition, the new energy
generation units at Medupi and Kusile have faced challenges in bringing the
units online.