Scale up agriculture production
EZULWINI – The Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) Fundi Tshazibana says in order to be self-sufficient in terms of food security, Eswatini needs to scale up its agriculture production.
Tshazibana, who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Prudential Authority was responding to questions from this publication on how Eswatini could grow and be less reliant on South Africa especially in terms of food.
The deputy governor was also a keynote speaker during the Common Monetary Area (CMA) Central Bank Governors’ symposium hosted by the Central Bank of Eswatini. The symposium was themed ‘Global Spillover Effects into the CMA Region’.
Worth noting is that the Common Monetary Area is a monetary union which includes South Africa, Namibia, Lesotho and Eswatini. While each of these sovereign nations issues its own currency, all four currencies are governed by the South African Reserve Bank and are valued and exchanged at par with the South African Rand.
The symposium was held at the Happy Valley hotel on Friday..
Tshazibana said there was a great need for the local Ministry of Agriculture to thoroughly collaborate with the farmers in order to scale up production. She mentioned that in
Eswatini, there was land and plenty of water, which could enable increased agriculture.
The SARB deputy governor mentioned that the only thing that might be a challenge may be the farming input and that was where the government should come in, as a service provider.
She said it was also worth noting that a country might not be able to produce enough as it was happening even in South Africa, where they were importing some food items, like wheat and rice.
STABLE
Therefore, she said, it was important for countries to have stable exchange rates that would accommodate the fact that all countries were one way or the other importers to a certain extent.
Tshazibana added that the stability of exchange rates was also important for the fuel prices as farmers needed fuel for transportation and ploughing among other things.
She mentioned that it was also important for the all the stakeholders in the government to play their part in creating an enabling environment for scaled up production.