ICT minister’s tough stance lauded
MANZINI – The Cabinet minister who is boldly telling parastatals to be self-sufficient will end the culture of depending on subventions, says economists.
The economists were reacting to the Minister of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT), Savannah Maziya’s statement where she said parastatals under her ministry should stop relying on government for subventions.
The economists said this was a mindset which was needed in government to turn things around. They said government needed to stop subventing the parastatals as they had the infrastructure.
Economist Thembinkosi Dube said: “This is the brave leadership needed to force parastatals to be independent. They have to be commercialised in order to stop depending on government subventions.”
Dube said government did not have enough resources to fully fund everything that parastatals had to do. He said they had to look into engaging in commercial exercises which would generate them revenue.
The economist made an example of Eswatini Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (EPTC) to be on the right track after it started generating revenue through its fibre. He said this was a move which had to be expanded, to ensure that the entity was self-sufficient and did not rely on government.
The economist said this was the same approach which the local tertiary institutions had to take. He said that tertiary institutions should maximise their research departments in order to generate revenue.
Dube said: “Their research departments should be aggressive and write articles which are striking. They can sell these journals on digital platforms.”
The economists said local tertiary institutions could engage in research for entities which wanted information on a particular subject or wanted to learn a certain trend.
Students
In fact, Dube said this was a trend adopted by many tertiary institutions which sponsored students to study for doctorates in various disciplines. He said their research was then used by the institutions to generate revenue as they would have been executed thoroughly by the students.
This was a similar sentiment to another shared by an economist, who requested not to be named. He said the tertiary institutions should also duplicate approaches used abroad in First World countries, where they partnered with the private sector. He said the private sector usually sponsored certain faculties, which were set to produce human resources for them.
The economist said government should adopt this approach across all parastatals, to ensure that they did not get accustomed to handouts (subventions) and fail to generate any revenue.
Meanwhile, the economists said the advantages of commercialising the Stateowned enterprises (SOEs) were that it would increase quality service and improve efficiency.
Dube said while the service would improve, it would come at a cost to the consumers depending on who was controlling the pricing scale. He said the commercialisation should be well structured in order to avoid affecting the man on the street who may be sidelined in the long-term.
On the hand, another economist said privatisation was not an end in itself, but a key tool for improving the efficient allocation of resources, for mobilising investment and for stimulating private sector development.
He said privatisation was meant to reduce corruption and the ‘leeching’ mentality, while promoting efficiency, transparency and better management.
The economist said it also led to government being able to focus on deprived social sectors like education, health, water, sanitation and rural infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Minister Maziya, on Monday, had a busy day as she met personnel from two SOEs under her ministry. These are the Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP) and EPTC.
At RSTP, she vowed to scrutinise the SOEs budget, as she demanded that every cent should count. She said RSTP was the engine of the ministry and as such, the organisation should do things correctly. She said at the moment, RSTP did not have an image out there and it seemed it was not doing quite well. In that regard, the minister said they had a lot of ground to cover, in terms of reputation.
During the engagements between the minister and the staff members, one of the workers raised a concern that some of the departments had limited vehicles and this limited their services to the nation.
In response, the minister said she could not promise them cars. However, she said if they could present their solid client base, which they wanted to service and would in turn generate revenue, the ministry could see what it could do.
“We cannot have enough cars because every government department, including the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS), wants vehicles,” the minister said.
She said government did not have enough money to buy all the required cars, thus she would demand that they should present solid clients, which they wanted to service with the vehicles they wanted.
“We should move away from always asking. There are many ‘children’ in this ‘family’,” the minister said.
She said they needed to do better in handling their finances. She said they needed to be responsible by being innovative in a cost-effective manner. Maziya noted that some things were bought at ridiculous prices and they would scrutinise the budget allocated to the SOE.
Globalise
The minister said RSTP should globalise its services, as opposed to focusing on selling locally, because the establishment would not grow as Eswatini had a population of 1.2 million. She said inasmuch as it was important to serve the nation, it was equally imperative for them to globalise and commercialise their services to stop relying on government.
It is worth noting that in the past few years, government’s subvention to RSTP was not less than E60 million. At EPTC the minister also challenged the corporation to find ways to decrease its reliance on government subvention.
Maziya said EPTC must rely less on government, but still service the public sector and the general public more. She stated that they must be able to generate their own income.
According to Maziya, in the first two weeks in office, they put together a strategy and further looked at how they could collaborate with the other agencies to be more effective. She said it was a fact that post offices globally were closing shop and they should find ways to keep theirs relevant. Maziya challenged EPTC to be future thinkers and not to be stuck in the past. She said they should come up with ideas and projects to ensure that the parastatal continued to be relevant, while also continuing to service the business community and the general public.