MBABANE – Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) continue to make an impact in the local economy as their credit rose to over E2.5 billion in the month of September.
This was analyse by the Central Bank of Eswatini (CBE) in their monthly statistical release for the month of September.
CBE said an analysis of credit to businesses by size of the enterprises revealed that credit to small & medium enterprises (SMEs) rose by 1.6 per cent from August 2023 and 16.5 per cent year-on-year to settle at E2.8 billion at the end of September 2023.
They said credit to large enterprises, on the other hand, receded by 3.1per cent month-on-month and rose by 7.1 per cent year-on-year to close the review month at E6.4 billion.
Credit extended to other sectors of the domestic economy amounted to E1.2 billion at the end of September 2023, reflecting a month-on-month and year-onyear improvement of 7.3 per cent and 52.0 per cent, respectively.
“Responsible for the increase was credit to both local government and other financial corporations, which grew by 20.1 per cent to E71.9 million and 8.7 per cent to E910.8 million, respectively. Credit to public nonfinancial corporations, on the other hand, declined by 0.7 per cent to E245.7 million,” added CBE.
Worth noting, Domestic liquid assets also declined by 6.4 per cent month-on-month and grew by 6.6 per cent year-on-year to reach E7.1 billion in September 2023. CBE said the discount rate was 7.5 per cent in October while the prime lending rate was 11 per cent.
The central bank further revealed in the report that M1 depicted a month-on-month improvement of 3.1 per cent and a decline of 3.1 per cent year-on-year to close the month under review at E8.8 billion.
“The month-on-month expansion in M1 was underpinned by both Emalangeni outside depository corporations and transferable (demand) deposits, which rose by 9.2 per cent to E850.3 million and 2.4 per cent to E7.9 billion,” added CBE.
