2024/2025 budget expectations
MBABANE – Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg says the 2024/2025 National Budget will focus a lot on economic development, job creation, improving health and education.
The minister was giving a sneakview into his bag of goodies, as he is expected to deliver his budget speech on Monday.
He assured that it was definitely more when compared to the previous year. This is attributed to the projected increase in revenue and the fact that Eswatini had somehow managed to fill up the debt gap.
The minister said the budget would mainly respond to the calls that were made by emaSwati during Sibaya and the over 200 contributions that were submitted by emaSwati on the platforms that were availed to the public. The minister, early in January, invited emaSwati to make submissions to the budget through social media platforms and email.
This was a response to a call that was made during Sibaya that the budget should be taken to the people. The Public Budget Committee (PBC) could not, however, visit the 59 constituencies in the country to collect the views of emaSwati.
The minister mentioned that the contributions of emaSwati were indeed eye-opening and had assisted the PBC as they were preparing the national budget. He mentioned that the submissions emphasised on health, education and job creation.
“Health and education will take priority in the budget as asked for by Sibaya and even the responses we are getting on the social media platforms that were opened up for people to comment, state the same thing,” he said.
The minister added that the budget would also address some of what the individual ministries needed as highlighted during Sibaya on youth. Rijkenberg noted that there was a very strong drive for growth, therefore they took this pillar seriously.
Problem
“We do believe that our main problem is poverty and unemployment and the only thing that can take us out of this challenge is growth. This is because economic growth does not only supply more jobs, but also better quality jobs that will deal with the challenge of poverty. We are really focusing on growth and to see what we can do for the economy to grow,” he said. The minister went on to state that agriculture was also key in growing the economy and would be getting a larger portion of the budget as well. He said even this year, the ministry would allocate agricultural capital projects a sizeable amount. Among those agricultural projects to look out for, the minister said was the Mkhondvo-Ngwavuma project.
This simply means with the projected increase of budgets in some of these sectors like capital projects, there would be job creation and conversely, a decrease in unemployment. Secondly, the budget increase for education and health will also mean emaSwati will find the medication they need in hospitals.
On Wednesday, government teams were doing final preparations for the anticipated national budget.
The 2022/2023 National Budget was E23.2 billion while in the year under review, it is E26.5 billion.