STATEMENT BY THE RT HON PRIME MINISTER
DR B.S.S. DLAMINI
AT THE OPENING OF THE RETREAT FOR CABINET MINISTERS
AT THE PIGGS PEAK HOTEL
MONDAY 11 JANUARY 2015
Honourable Deputy Prime Minister
Honourable Ministers
Retreat Resource Persons
Representatives of the Media
Ladies and Gentlemen
I start today by wishing all present a happy, healthy and productive new year, and extending a warm welcome to the 2016 Cabinet Retreat.
This is an annual event that is to enable Cabinet to commit itself in time and energy to a week of intensive focus - a period when we will reflect on the past year, including performance in the meeting of Ministry targets, and we will discuss key issues, and develop strategies for tackling the opportunities and challenges of the coming twelve months.
The event is what the horticulturalists would call a hardy annual. At the start of 2014 this Retreat served the purpose of informing, preparing and empowering all Cabinet Ministers for leadership of their respective Ministries. At the beginning of last year, 2015, we embarked on an intensive review of outstanding draft legislation and managed to process through Cabinet no fewer than 32 pieces of legislation.
Our agenda this week is one that looks across the economic and social spectrum of our country and captures a number of issues of fundamental national importance, and on which we must develop a strategic direction for the coming months.
Central to all agenda items is our aim, as Government, to improve the well-being of our people. Two key items that impact directly in this regard are the level of employment in the country and the increasingly severe challenge experienced in areas most heavily affected by drought. Addressing those two subjects is captured in the two agenda items entitled: job creation initiatives and the drought mitigation plan.
A third agenda item relating to financing a public service delivery of high quality - and, again, the well-being of our people - is entitled reducing reliance on SACU receipts.
During this week, we will be informed and motivated, and we will discuss and strategise on the agenda items. Far be it for me to be pre-emptive in terms of views and outcomes, but I cannot neglect reminding us of the need to focus on the big picture, especially in the three agenda items I have mentioned.
Making our business environment second to none for foreign direct investors, domestic large scale companies, and small, medium and micro-scale enterprises (SMMEs) will lead not only to economic growth and higher tax revenue but it will also create many jobs. What I call "the big picture" is what stands out as making companies really want to do business in Swaziland, as well as encouraging and facilitating SMME growth for the many young people who are both available and capable. Are we providing that? Is there real change taking place on the ground?
A time-bound and costed Drought Mitigation Action Plan will be presented. There can be no greater immediate priority than to interrogate and refine it as necessary, then give our fullest support to securing the necessary resources and implementing vigorously and efficiently. We cannot be leaving this hotel without the Action Plan being ready now, or in the very near future, for accurately targeted mobilisation. For people in desperate circumstances even today is none too early.
The income from SACU is, into the short and medium term, falling quite substantially. We have to make a sizeable substitution in the form of domestic source revenue. That means assessing and collecting all the taxation that should be paid. Our strategies should recognise that fuller taxpayer compliance presents itself as a moral and practical priority, ahead of easier options that can create disincentives to investors.
It is now time for us to receive our briefings, analyse and discuss each agenda item to produce the strategies and decisions that do justice to the five days, and to the people of Swaziland. I look forward very much to participating with you in those deliberations.
Thank you.