The Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg has lauded the Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC) for not increasing electricity tariffs during the COVID-19 pandemic period.
Rijkenberg divulged this when making his remarks during the official launch of the Eswatini Economic Update held at the Hilton Garden Inn Hotel yesterday.
The report titled Eswatini Economic Update- Raising the Game with Efficient State-Owned Enterprises highlights that SOEs provide basic infrastructure services to businesses and households.
The report further examines the role of SOEs in enhancing economic performance and evaluating their contribution to the economy.
The Minister said if EEC had instituted a price increase in those two tumultuous years’ then the country would have experienced higher inflation.
“The freezing of the hike during those two tough years was highly essential as it led to the country being able to constrain inflation. In actual fact when you look at the country’s inflation rate during that period you will realize that other countries in the region were experiencing significant hikes in their inflation rate”.
Rijkenberg disclosed that EEC was able to cushion the country because of how productive the state-owned enterprise is run.
“Not all state-owned enterprises perform badly, EEC is an example that with the right leadership parastatals can deliver on their mandate and also be profitable at the same time.”
The Minister however conceded that the country needs reforms as far as SOEs are concerned. He said the reality is the country has a lot of SOEs.
“Even though there are SOEs such as EEC who have performed impeccably well, we still have others that require certain levels of reform. There are SOEs that need to be merged, others privatized and others brought back to different ministries.”
He also revealed to the World Bank that the country has started with the SOE reform and is currently in phase one of the exercise. The Minister implored the World Bank to assist the country as it goes through the SOE reform programme.