By EPN Reporter
MBABANE – In what might come as good news to Emaswati, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade plans to create 28 000 jobs by the end of five years from now.
This was said by Minister for Commerce, Industry and Trade Manqoba Khumalo today in an exclusive meeting with EPN team at his offices in Mbabane.
The minister was responding to a question on whether there was an improvement on investments in the country, compared to the time when the country faced challenges in 2021.
The country underwent some political upheavals in 2021, coupled with the fact that there was still an outbreak of COVID-19 towards the end of 2019, which went on to 2020 and 2021. At the beginning of 2021, the country also experienced Cyclone Eloise, which damaged a lot of infrastructure.
All of these unfortunate circumstances negatively affected the country in many ways and the business environment was affected, as many companies had to be closed, either because of looting (in case of political upheavals), lockdown regulations (in case of COVID-19), or infrastructural damage (in case of Cyclone Eloise).
Khumalo said the investors showed more interest in investing in the country, now that the country was going past those challenges. The improvement, according to Khumalo made government to project that at the end of five years from now, about 28 000 jobs would be created. He said this year, government wanted to create about 5 000 jobs.
The minister said government, through the commerce ministry, had a pipeline of investment, some of which were supposed to go on this year. He said the jobs would be created across many industries in the country, including the mining sector.
