The Eswatini economy will not grow at the pace required to transform it and raise welfare unless the country goes back to the basics: developing a good understanding of the productive structures, and nurturing and expanding these through deliberate and strategic engagement of emaSwati.
To make 2020 the year of the MSMEs, the country needs to focus on attracting and cultivating all business investments, be it local or foreign. No viable local business idea should fall through the cracks.
The ground to cultivate investment to local businesses is fertile given some of the investments that the Government of Eswatini has put in place to catalyse private sector growth. For example, the country now has the Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP), which is positioned to leverage technology and innovation to create new sectors of the economy over and above wholesale and retail trade, sugar, and soft drink concentrates that have become the only major GDP generators in Eswatini.
The country needs to take the next step, which is to deliberately and aggressively increase investment into local MSME development programmes in order to expand the private sector and increase its economic base. Look at how Japan grew to be the industrial giant that it is carried by 3.81 million MSMEs that account for 99.7% of the total number of companies in that country. After defeat from the Second World War, the Japanese economy began its growth trajectory through deliberate and sophisticated MSME develoment and eventually caught-up with the other advanced economies.
Large companies led this success, but MSMEs also maintained their share at a high level by increasing their number, instead of becoming extinct. To grow and maintain a vibrant MSME sector in Eswatini, the country needs strategic and coordinated investments into the sector so that all entrepreneurs can be channelled into a well-packaged and sophisticated support system that can in turn create an ecosystem of successful Eswatin MSMEs. To create this ecosystem of successful MSMEs, Eswatini can learn from the institutional arrangement for MSME support in Japan.
Eswatini does not necessarily have to copy and paste the same institutional set-up, but to have the MSME growth that the country needs, there will be a need to develop a well structured system to support MSME business development. It’s about harnessing and making sure that the economy generates good business ideas. To become an export-led economy, Eswatini needs to grow a good stock of local companies that will capitalise on the different trade agreements that the country has already secured. To export; however, the country must produce, which is part of the concept of going back to basics that Eswatini must consider as it implements the Strategic Roadmap to economic recovery.
