COVID-19: BANKS TO OFFER RELIEF, FUEL TO GO DOWN

MBABANE - At the height of the coronavirus outbreak, some good news had to come from government for the consumer.
Yesterday, the Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, announced that banks had stated that individuals and companies that needed short-term financial support or relief could approach them.

He, however, stated that each application would be assessed on a risk-based approach.
The minister said the secondary crisis that Eswatini was facing was an economical one and therefore, the country had to put some measures in place and try and assist businesses that stand to suffer the effects of the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Giving more good news, the minister said during the first week of April 2020, fuel prices would also go down.
However, the minister did not reveal the figure of how much the reduction would be, stating that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy was yet to finalise the calculations and would make the necessary announcement as usual.   

   
A litre of petrol currently costs E13.65.

Reduced

Rijkenberg further stated that the Central Bank of Eswatini had since reduced the discount rate with 100 basis points (one per cent) that would reduce the cost of debt by one per cent.
Essentially, this means that consumers will pay less interest on their loans.

“The Central Bank has reduced the liquidity requirement for the banks from 25 per cent to 20 per cent giving the banks more liquidity,” he said.
According to an economist, this basically means that the banks would have more ‘cash’ with them that they could responsibly lend to the public.
Minister Rijkenberg further stated that the public must not fear a ‘shortage of cash’ as the banking sector had enough liquidity.

The minister had more good news for taxpayers when it comes to provisional tax payments.
He said tax payers projecting losses would file loss provisional returns and therefore no payment would be required of them.
“The due date has been postponed by three months which means June declarations and payments are due in September and December declarations due in March 2021,” said Rijkenberg.

The minister further announced the extension of returns filing deadline by three months before penalties kicked in, otherwise normal filling was welcome.
Rijkenberg said taxpayers facing cash flow problems should provide evidence which was to be considered for payment arrangements. However, this would only be applicable to current dues for Income Tax.

The minister said for old debts, the Eswatini Revenue Authority (SRA) would waive penalties and interest if the principal debt was cleared by the end of September 2020.

“This applies to all debts excluding Customs debt,” said Rijkenberg.
He submitted that such a move would assist taxpayers clear their old debts and accumulated interest and penalties and start on a clean slate for their businesses to enhance recovery.

Crisis

The minister further submitted that more measures might be added in time depending on the level of the crisis.
He said as the world economy slowed down, stock exchanges crash, trade flows were curtailed and movement in countries was stopped and as such there was a need for Eswatini to put some measures in place to try and assist individuals and businesses that stand to suffer from the effects of the economic crisis.

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