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M– Gogo Tjengisile Sihlongonyane of Mbikwakhe in Matsapha was expecting an increase in social grants for the elderly this year.

However, hopes of seeing this expectation come true have been decimated by volatile events in the country that have seen the revenue collection agency struggling to meet its targets.

Lockdowns, curfews associated with the coronavirus pandemic as well as the political unrest are just some of the anti-economic growth conditions that the country battled over the past year.

At age 65, Sihlongonyane said the E500 monthly grant, which gets deposited into her account, was too minuscule to afford her life’s necessities, to the point that she is forced to make debts, or live from begging, to survive.

“My two grandchildren and I buy 25 kilogrammes of maize meal costing about E200 and four full chickens costing E80 each, which lasts only two weeks. From there on wards, we rely on handouts to survive,” she said.

She said since she started receiving the grant, she had never had and increment.

“Three years ago things were not as expensive as they are now, but the grant has not increased. We were expecting an increase this year and we are disappointed that we still get the same amount that we were getting four years ago,” she said.

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The Eswatini Revenue Service (ERS) said this week that it was projecting a 10.2 per cent shortfall in meeting its target for the collection of revenue over the 2021/22 financial year.

The outgoing authority’s Commissioner General Dumsani Masilela disclosed in an interview that a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and certain policy measures that were not implementable in the year under review were responsible for the shortfall in revenue collection.

“There are some policy measures which we were anticipating would cover the stream,” he said.

Though he did not state what the policy measures were, it was announced recently that the Income Tax Order (Amendment Bill 2021), which was currently in Cabinet for discussion, would seek to introduce a number of revenue enhancement measures.

The shortfall in tax collection is expected to impact negatively on the fiscal budget to be delivered by the Finance Minister Neal Rijkenberg next month.

Already Rijkenberg has said government ministries were asked to reduce their budgets to be able to accommodate the budget which is expected to be stringent.

This is despite that the country is expecting about E6 billion in proceeds from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), which is an annual allocation for member states after the collection of customs duties.

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During his budget speech last year, Minister Rijkenberg said government revenue and grants were projected to amount to E18.9 billion, corresponding to 28.9 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP).

The projected revenue collection displayed a significant shortfall against the initial budget of E21.1 billion, largely attributed to the disruption in the economy brought about by the coronavirus pandemic which was prevalent in 2020 for the better part of.

Despite the significant underperformance of actual revenue receipts against projections in the previous fiscal year, the minister had said revenue receipts were still at record highs.

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The overall target given to the ERS this year was E12.02 billion. However, of this amount, the sevice would only manage to collect E10.8 billion. The ERS said around E293 million shortfall was a result of some proposed government policy changes not coming into effect.

An economist, who asked not to be named said one of the major contributors to the revenue was the fuel levies.

“Part of the levy goes to taxes while part of it goes to taxes. Given that we had a series of lockdowns last year whereby filling stations were orderd to close as early as 5 pm, we can expect lower collections on that end.”

The economist also said many businesses were closed down as a result of the unrest, which also ensured

“I don’t think government suffered much in terms of pay as you earn because most of those working in the shops that were burnt were not within the taxable bracket. They earned less than E3 500 per month,” he said.

He said he was expecting the revenue collection to normalise in the first quarter of the year as governments were taking a decision not to effect lockdowns anymore, but to free the economy even when COVID-19 infection numbers were high. As a means of improving the economy, government introduced revenue enhancing measures and policies intended to increase revenue collection.

This was done through the introduction of strategies such as the Fiscal Adjustment Road map (FAR), which was aimed at enhancing revenue as well as reducing expenditure with the ultimate aim being to resuscitate the economy. In his Mid-Term Budget Review Report 2021/22 presented at the end of last year, Minister Rijkenberg stated that government had been running persistent fiscal deficits in the recent past and continued to face daunting fiscal and economic challenges. that returns were lessened.