Africa-Press – Eswatini. The wholesale and retail business segment performance increased in the current quarter, thus contracting inflation.
Businesses in the above mentioned segment were able to record growth in sales and profit as well as clients. According to the Eswatini inflation report compiled by the central statistical office (CSO), the headline inflation rate in October 2022, for Eswatini was 5.5 per cent depicting a drop of 110 basis points from 6.7 per cent in September.
CSO said group contributions to the headline inflation rate for October included food and non-alcoholic beverages (2.5 per cent), transport (1.4 per cent), as well as the housing and utilities (0.3 per cent) categories respectively contributed significantly to the headline inflation rate of 5.5 per cent.
This means that out of the 5.5 per cent inflation rate, 4.2 per cent was contributed by the above named categories under wholesale and retail. Worth noting is that it is not the first time the wholesale and retail business segment dominate agriculture, which was afore at the helm. This also means Eswatini will continue to import more and export less as the agriculture and farming industry production rate continues to decline in the overall business segmentation.
This sector was leading in the country, with production sufficient enough to supply both local and international markets. Local farmers seem to be finding it difficult to produce enough products to supply both local and international markets, which are demanding. More products which were produced locally are now imported to the country which increases supply cost making them more expensive.
Increase
The decrease observed in the agriculture sector has resulted to an increase in the wholesale and retail sector. This was mentioned by Mluleki Dlamini the Director of micro small and medium enterprises (MSME) during the capacity building on entrepreneurship development for MSME in the country at Sibane Sami hotel. Dlamini said the agriculture and farming sector needed to grow in order to decrease the level of imports in the country. He said the decline in this sector had resulted to the country relying more on imported products, which were expensive to supply and buy. “The decrease in agriculture production has resulted to the price of products to increase in stores because most of them are now acquired abroad,” he said. Dlamini said the wholesale and retail business was leading because it relied more on the movement and supply of goods. He said the movement increased when agriculture and farming decreased because most produce which was produced locally was halted.
“Most farmers have stopped producing the products which are now being imported in large quantities causing the shift in the sector,” said the director. Nomphilo Dlamini a feedlot farmer based in Madlangampisi said the decrease was caused by the lack of support by government and cooperatives in the agri-business. Dlamini was speaking on behalf of feedlot farmers during the event. She said local banks found it difficult to offer financial support to feedlot farmers because they did not understand the business. “When we go to these cooperatives to request for loans, we are not assisted because the people in these institutions do not know how our business operates,” she said.
Loan
Dlamini added that should a loan application become successful, the cooperatives would give them a period of a month to start repayments. She said this affected their business because they needed about six months to start paying back the money. “when they give us loans, they want us to start repaying them quick which affects us because we need time to observe the growth and production phase,” she said. The farmer added that the cooperatives needed to hire people who understood the agri-business so that the banks could understand the business. She said this would make it easier for the banks to know how long production takes and would also understand the process of the business.
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