Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg announces that Southern African Customs Union (SACU) receipts for Eswatini will increase by 102% in 2023/2024, the highest the country has ever received

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Southern African Customs Union (SACU) receipts for Eswatini will increase by 102 percent in 2023/24 from E5.8 billion in 2022/23 to E11.75 billion.This is the highest share that the country has ever received from the regional bloc and the factors that have contributed are as follows :

• A higher than projected outturn of the 2021/22 Common Revenue Pool (CRP) and the surplus emanating from that will be paid together with the 2023/24 revenue share.
• A 25°/o increase in the projected size of the CRP for 2023/24 compared to 2022/23 .
• An increase in Eswatini's share of total intra-SACU imports from 9.6o/o in the revenue sharing framework for 2022/23 to 10.8°/o in 2023/24. This means that the measures that the Ministry has been implementing in order to enhance intra-SACU imports have started paying off.

Government will be setting up a SACU stabilisation fund which still needs to be approved through Cabinet and Parliament. We are hoping to table the regulations for the fund together with the budget that will be presented soon. The SACU stabilisation fund will be put in place so that when we have better years like the year ahead, we will take the funds from that year to cushion in years when the SACU receipts are low. This will help bring more stability to the volatility that we normally have in SACU receipts that we get as country.

We are still planning and hoping that this will be finalised in Cabinet and Parliament. We are also hoping to put about E1.5 billion into the SACU stabilisation fund this coming year ;this should give us a lot more stability as an economy going forward.

A lot of work has gone into this from the officials at the Ministry of Finance and Eswatini Revenue Authority, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for all the hard work they have put in to work on the numbers from our side as Eswatini. The advantage of this is that it is resetting our normal, so going forward we should continue to receive a higher percentage of the SACU revenue pool.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Ministry of Finance, The Government of the Kingdom of Eswatini.