Optimistic Swazi Finance
Minister’s budget speech is symptomatic treatment
Kenworthy News Media February 23, 2013
“It is a bold budget that will boost growth and support the vulnerable …
the financial system in Swaziland is generally sound … We remain cautiously optimistic,”
Swaziland’s Minister of Finance Majozi Sithole said in his budget
speech on Friday (22 February 2013), writes Kenowrthy News Media.
Others have less reason for optimism. “Swaziland is tied with Somalia as
having the worst performing economy in Africa and there is nothing on the
horizon to improve the situation,” a Swazi investment counsellor told
Business Report in January. Swaziland’s inflation
rate, for instance, is worse than Zimbabwe’s.
“We have witnessed consequential events as we went through the tough
fiscal or economic crisis, scholarships being withdrawn, students under the
free education program being chased away from schools, a threatened cutting of
the wages bill, the cutting into half of elderly grants. In the year 2012, the
economy of Swaziland visibly became political,” Swaziland Economic Justice
Network said in a press statement on Thursday.
Majozi Sithole, for his part, blamed “the strength of the global
economy” for Swaziland’s woes, whilst admitting that Swaziland’s “own economic
growth rate remains sluggish and significantly below our potential.” He named
slow growth abroad, fewer tourists, reduced government spending, high inflation
and a freeze in public sector wages as other reasons.
But Joannes Mongardini, Mission Chief at International Monetary Fund,
disagrees with Sithole. After having visited
Swaziland in November 2012, he said that “growth in Swaziland has been weaker
over the last ten years than in other SACU countries. This is associated with
high unemployment, widespread poverty, rising inequalities, and the highest
HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in the world.” This is echoed by the 2013 Index of Economic Freedom, where one can read that the “poor
management of public finance has aggravated [Swaziland’s] fiscal crisis since
2011.”
The solutions given by Majozi Sithole to his targets of creating jobs,
improving the value for money of public spending, and strengthening social
sector spending, amongst other things, rather bizarrely included a combination
of cutting both public spending and taxes, including corporate taxes.
On the other hand, Sithole made no mention of reducing the money
lavishly spent on king Mswati III, who is believed to be one of the wealthiest
monarchs in the world, despite two thirds of his countrymen living below the
poverty line.
Nor did he announce any cuts on Mswati’s prestige projects, instead
stating that “[one of] the largest projects in 2013/2014 will be Sikhuphe
International Airport,” a white elephant that the IMF as far back as 2004 said threatened
“to crowd out budgetary resources for meeting the country’s urgent social needs
and to weaken sentiment among donors.”
And political and social reforms of Msawti’s absolute monarchy was not
mentioned either, even though a new IMF report
clearly links growth in Swaziland to reforms. “Swaziland would need to secure a
broad political and social consensus on reforms and make continued progress on
strengthening the quality of its institutions.”
Instead increased funding of the police and the army, who have been
increasingly brutal in their clamp down on Swaziland’s democratic movement, was
on the agenda. “Crime is a deterrent for foreign direct investment,
particularly violent crime,” said Sithole. “The Police, the Army and the
Correctional Services must be recognised for their efforts to make Swaziland a
safe place to live and invest. To ensure that these critical institutions are
properly resourced, the Budget will provide an additional recurrent allocation
of E175 million to the Ministry of Defence, the Police and the Correctional
Services.”
See also
SWAZI BUDGET
SNUBS IMF ADVICE
KING’S
VANITY COMES BEFORE THE POOR
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