ICT Minister Savannah Maziya has given insight into what she believes is discouraging potential investors from Eswatini, revealing why some have turned their backs on investing in the country.
This was during the Eswatini Observer Five Questions podcast.
The minister said she had come to know, before entering politics, that some potential investors had been discouraged from investing in Eswatini because ministers and government officials allegedly asked them to pay 10 per cent before doing business in the country.
This, in her opinion, had tainted the image of the country and denied Eswatini good investment.
According to Maziya, government should create an enabling environment for investment and then ‘get out of the way’.
She said government should not become known as a ‘10 percenter’, where investors believed they could not operate in the country unless they gave a ‘special friend’ 10 per cent.
Maziya said before she joined government, the issue had been developing into a serious public relations problem.
She said people they encountered would claim that they had previously considered investing in the country, only to be asked for 10 per cent by a minister or government official.
She said such demands did not merely impose an additional cost on potential investors, but made the process of entering the country considerably more difficult.
According to Maziya, investors could simply walk away, leaving the country unaware of how many opportunities it had lost or how negative experiences had influenced other potential investors.
“What tends to happen is when you bring in the big brand names, people do not know what to do, because the big brand names do not understand the 10 per cent. They look at you and say they will not do this, then we block them because they are not living in the ecosystem that we are used to,” she said.
Maziya said the country needed to be open to allowing major international brands to operate without being unnecessarily blocked.
She warned that the country would struggle to prosper if people continued allegedly demanding 10 per cent from investors or threatening to prevent them from operating unless they paid.
She added that the country also needed people with the necessary skills and capacity to do the work.
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