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SNCAC braces itself for budget speech

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MBABANE – The Swaziland National Council of Arts and Culture (SNCAC) has requested less cash for this year’s budget.

This comes after the Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini announced that there would have to be budget cuts for all government sectors’ budget proposals due to the global economic meltdown which has also affected the country.
Revealing this information was SNCAC CEO Stanley Dlamini who said: “We had to conform to the requirements by the Prime Minister that we present budget proposals with figures less than the ones we requested from government last year.”

He said as a result, the council had to cut some costs to try and help the Ministry of Finance to minimise costs because government is reportedly cash-strapped.
He said they therefore requested less cash from government for this financial year, a figure he however declined to disclose.

 “If we get less than what we have requested then the development of the arts and culture industry in the country will be adversely affected,” said Dlamini.
Affected
He said the effect would be felt from the council offices down to the associations that are affiliated to it, as well as the smaller affiliates also linked to them. The associations get a subsidy from the council to cater for administrative costs. If the council gets less than what they have asked for, then their subsidies will be reduced.
Dlamini said the council planned to mitigate these effects by introducing projects.

Reflected

“We will collaborate with other partners on some of the projects lined-up this year so as to distribute the costs evenly and we have already roped in Mbongeni Ngema as a partner in one of our projects,” he said.
All will be revealed on Friday when the Minister of Finance, Majozi Sithole, presents his Budget Speech for this financial year in Parliament.

In the previous year’s financial statement presented by the Ministry of Sports, Arts And Culture, it reflected that SNCAC received approximately E3m, an amount that the Council said was not enough for it to expertly carryout all its duties.

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