SOME Cabinet ministers and heads of government departments have broadly welcomed the release of government’s Annual Synopsis Performance Report 2025/26.
However, some have questioned whether ministries with vastly different mandates, responsibilities and operating environments can fairly be measured against one another on the same scale.
The reactions followed the release of the report on Wednesday, which placed overall government performance at 48%, an improvement from 22% in the first quarter, 31% in the second quarter and 41% in the third quarter. It is a first of its kind and was released by Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini.
While the improvement was welcomed, the report also showed wide differences between institutions.
His Majesty’s Correctional Services (HMCS) emerged as the highest-scoring entity at 75%, followed by the Ministry of Sports, Culture and Youth Affairs at 60%, the Ministry of Health at 58% and the Prime Minister’s Office at 56%.
At the other end, the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) recorded 33%.
For some of the ministers and departmental leaders, however, the rankings should not be viewed as a straightforward competition between ministries.
A recurring sentiment from the responses was that government ministries cannot necessarily be compared as though they operate under identical conditions.
“Some have broad and complex mandates covering several sectors, while others have narrower responsibilities and fewer outputs against which they are assessed,” one minister pointed out.
While HMCS achieved the highest score of 75%, the assessment cautions that it is primarily a supporting department with peripheral activities rather than a lead entity responsible for most Programme of Action (PoA) outputs.
The report pointed out that ministries such as health and the prime minister’s office carry core, high-complexity mandates.
The observation gives weight to the argument from some ministry leaders that a score should be read in the context of the work and responsibilities assigned to each institution, rather than simply used to rank one ministry against another.
Another issue raised by the leaders was the relationship between the ‘Nkwe’ PoA and the individual mandates of ministries.
The PoA is a Cabinet-approved national framework against which government assessed progress across the six national objectives.
The report explained that performance for each objective was calculated as a weighted average of outputs contributed by different ministries and departments.
Some ministers felt that this framework did not always neatly correspond with their day-to-day statutory or core mandates.
The concern is that ministries may find themselves being assessed on PoA outputs that sit alongside, rather than completely within, the normal responsibilities for which they were established.
This, they suggested, makes the interpretation of a ministry’s overall score more complicated.
Some ministers were not satisfied with their scores and indicated that there was considerable room for improvement.
Others welcomed the assessment as an opportunity to identify weaknesses and committed themselves to doing better in the next reporting cycle.
That response is consistent with the report’s conclusion that the 48% national score is still too low, because it means that more than half of planned outputs were not fully achieved.
The report recommended stronger quarterly monitoring, early identification of problems and front-loading of critical activities so that delays encountered early in the financial year do not compound.
