BY DELISA THWALA
MBABANE – The Happy Valley Hotel in Ezulwini was a hive of activity yesterday when a number of SACU Ministers arrived and accredited yesterday.
The Ministers are here to discuss private matters ahead of the 8th Southern African Customs Union (SACU) Summit.
This summit will be held on June 29, 2023, and His Majesty King Mswati III will grace the event.
The SACU Summit will be held at the Mandvulo Convention Centre and will be attended by the Heads of State and representatives of SACU Member States the Kingdom of Eswatini, the host; Botswana; Kingdom of Lesotho; Namibia and South Africa.
The 8th Summit will consider progress being made on the implementation of the SACU Strategic Plan whose pillars include, Industrialization through the development of regional value chains, investment attraction, and export promotion.
It will also consider Trade Facilitation and Logistics, Implementation and Leveraging of the African Continental Free Trade Area, Unified Engagement with Third Parties and Finance and Resource Mobilization.
Meanwhile Minister of finance Neal Rijkenberg earlier this year announced that receipts for Eswatini will increase by 102 per cent in 2023/24 from E5.8 billion in 2022/23 to E11.75 billion.
He said this was the highest share that the country has ever received from the regional bloc and the factors that have contributed.
“A higher than projected outturn of the 2021/22 Common Revenue Pool (CRP) and the surplus emanating from that will be paid together with the 2023/24 revenue share. A 25°/o increase in the projected size of the CRP for 2023/24 compared to 2022/23,” he said.
In addition, he said an increase in Eswatini’s share of total intra-SACU imports from 9.6 per cent in the revenue sharing framework for 2022/23 to 10.8 per cent in 2023/24.
This means that the measures that the Ministry has been implementing in order to enhance intra-SACU imports have started paying off.
“Government will be setting up a SACU stabilization fund which still needs to be approved through Cabinet and Parliament. We are hoping to table the regulations for the fund together with the budget that will be presented soon,”
“The SACU stabilization fund will be put in place so that when we have better years like the year ahead, we will take the funds from that year to cushion in years when the SACU receipts are low. This will help bring more stability to the volatility that we normally have in SACU receipts that we get as a country,” he said.
Minister Neal further said they were still planning and hoping that this will be finalized in Cabinet and Parliament where they were also hoping to put about E1.5 billion into the SACU stabilization fund this coming year, this should give them a lot more stability as an economy going forward. “A lot of work has gone into this from the officials at the Ministry of Finance and Eswatini Revenue Authority, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for all the hard work they have put into work on the numbers from our side as Eswatini. The advantage of this is that it is resetting our normal, so going forward we should continue to receive a higher percentage of the SACU revenue pool,” he said.
