BE ENCOURAGES MINISTER, SAYS IT’S STEP IN RIGHT DIRECTION

MBABANE – “We say kudos to the minister!”

This was the reaction of Business Eswatini (BE) in light of the announcement by the Minister of Finance, Neal Rijkenberg, that government would be writing off about E3 billion in interests and penalties for businesses and parastatals. The Chief Executive Officer of BE, Nathi Dlamini, said while they were yet to meet with the minister to get all the details about this exciting programme, BE thanked him (Rijkenberg) profoundly in advance for making credible attempts to do the right thing.

Encourage

“At the very least, this is a step in the right direction, and we encourage the minister to do even more. On behalf of the business community, we say kudos to the minister!” Dlamini said.
He said as much as his dealings with Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) had always been civil and generally fair and on behalf of BE and indeed himself, everyone would be aware that the business community was on record to have taken issue with the manner in which interest charges were calculated and penalties applied on taxpayers, who were experiencing hard times.
“I am not talking about unrepentant tax dodgers whose intentions are to evade tax at every turn. Business Eswatini does not represent those. But what I am talking about here are law-abiding citizens and companies who take tax-compliance seriously and yet feel ill-treated by ERS.”

Dlamini said the feeling of the business community was that the tax receiver had always seemed to take extreme pleasure in being abrasive and heartless to taxpayers who had fallen on bad times, despite their impeccable record of compliance. He said that was the perception out there.  “Sadly, true or not, perception quickly takes the form of reality when the horror stories about ERS are told in the streets and boardrooms persistently. I have seen businesses, especially smaller ones, make decisions to shut down their operations than to endure what they claim is sustained torment by ERS.”

Announcement

He said it was against this backdrop that the announcement by the minister of Finance was greeted with enthusiasm due, in no small part, to the fact that companies were languishing in debt out there. Dlamini said the lockdowns of the past two years and disruptions in international supply chains meant that businesses had been twirling their fingers and doing no business at all. Meanwhile, he said their obligations with ERS were mounting, compounded of course by the daily penalties and sky-high interest rates which could barely meet the minimum moral standards of finance because they were so high. He said some countries had enforceable usury laws so that formal institutions did not find themselves rivalling unregulated street shylocks in applying interest rates.

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