BY EPN Reporter
MBABANE – Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini says the only way to fight unemployment and the challenges the country has is to exponentially grow the economy.
The Premier said this in response to a question posed by Channel YemaSwati Editor Khanyisile Mabuza, who wanted to know what Government was doing to export finished products, as it was still exporting raw material from the mining industry and agricultural produce.
Mabuza was concerned that the country was faced with the problem of unemployment, yet it was exporting raw materials. The PM said during Cabinet retreat, the World Bank and the Ministry of Economic Planning and Development stated that that the country’s economy was improving.
However, the two organisations, according to the PM, stated that even if the country had an economy that was growing by 4.5 or five percent constantly for the next 10 years, it was still going to face the problems it was facing now. In fact, the challenges would continue to grow.
“We need to grow the economy at an exponential rate for us to overcome poverty and unemployment. Therefore, it goes without saying that if we are going to focus on creating more jobs in growing the economy, exponentially, we will be likely to be able to address the challenges we are facing,” Dlamini said.
He said therefore, there was a need for Government to invest its resources in growing the economy. He said going forward, Govenrment was going to ensure that wasteful spending and the wage bill was reduced. The Premier mentioned that there was a need to accept that there were civil servants who were not doing much and whom Government could do without.
The PM told the scribes that there was a need to be aggressive in its industrialisation approach, so that more investments could come into the country.
