Foreign-owned banks in Swaziland might leave the
kingdom if a proposed new levy announced by the Minister of Finance Martin
Dlamini goes ahead.
Banks will be expected to pay 2.5 percent of their
annual income to the government of King Mswati III, sub-Saharan Africa’s last
absolute monarch.
Standard Bank Chief Executive Mvuselelo Fakudze told a
meeting at Gigi’s Restaurant, Ezulwini on Monday (12 March 2018) banks had parent
companies in other countries which would close their Swaziland operations if
profits fell.
The
Swazi Observer,
a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, reported that Fakudze said, ‘Government
may be forcing investors which are the parent companies of most of the banks we
have in Swaziland to review their reason of being in the country. With
Swaziland being a small economy, the percentage of what we give back to our
parent companies is far less than what subsidiaries in other countries are
offering, so now the bank revenue levy will make us even less profitable.’
He
said banks had not been consulted on the new levy.
The Swaziland Government owns 25 percent of the shares
in Standard Bank Swaziland Ltd. There
are three foreign-owned banks in the kingdom: Standard Bank, Nedbank and First
National. The government-owned Swaziland Development and Savings Bank
went bankrupt due to millions of dollars of unpaid loans in June 1995. Today, the
kingdom’s only local bank is SwaziBank.
The total
assets of Swazi banks is estimated by the United States Bureau of Economic
and Business Affairs to be approximately
E15.4 billion (US$1.2 billion).
See also
SWAZI BUDGET A TALE OF WOE
No comments:
Post a Comment