NO MONEY FOR CIVIL SERVANTS’ SALARIES?

LOBAMBA – If you thought the zero per cent that was offered by government was stressful enough for civil servants, then think again because something worse could be coming.
For the month of June 2018, government might not be able to pay civil servants’ salaries.

This is because for this month alone, about E1.1 billion is required to settle priority expenditure that cannot be postponed.
Of this amount, E702 million is for salaries for the current month and this includes payment of on-call allowance of E56 million, while E363 million if for outstanding deductions for pension and cooperatives due in May 2018.

Shocking

Revealing such shocking news was the Minister of Finance, Martin Dlamini, during a sitting at the House of Assembly yesterday, where he tabled a report of the country’s current financial status.
This is definitely not good news for civil servants, who are still bitter after government tabled a zero per cent offer for their cost-of-living adjustment.
Dlamini informed the House that government’s cash flow position has had an enormous negative impact on the payment of its trading partners.

The partners include suppliers and contractors, as well as its overall ability to meet its priority expenditure obligations such as salaries, debt service, statutory payments and transfers.
The minister stated that government was trying everything possible to make sure that in spite of the cash flow challenges, priority payment obligations such as salaries and other statutory transfers were met.
“Government has been faced with an acute cash flow shortage in the recent past and it is reasonable to assume that this trend will continue into the medium term,” said Dlamini.

The minister highlighted that the 2017/2018 budget allocated an overall deficit of - 8.1 per cent of GDP but that preliminary estimates indicated that owing to the passage of a supplementary appropriation, as of March 31, 2018, the figure had been revised upwards to - 8.3 per cent.

He said while stringent expenditure cuts had been made to reduce the budget deficit to 6.9 per cent in the budget for 2018/2019, government still found itself confronted with a serious cash flow problem.

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