The sugar industry in Swaziland is the highest contributor to the government treasury through taxation, social services and trade. The sugar industry also plays a crucial role in the Swaziland’s economy by influencing economic growth and employment. Given the role of the Swaziland’s sugar industry, it is therefore important to understand the influencing factors of the Swaziland sugar exports volumes to its major trading partners. The study objective was to analyze the factors determining sugar export from Swaziland to her trading partners using a gravity model approach. The study used panel dataset for the period 2001 to 2013. The results showed that Swaziland’s GDP, importer’s GDP, importer’s land area and official common language had significant positive effects on Swaziland’s sugar exports. The study further revealed that the creation of COMESA and EU trading blocs had significant positive effects on the Swaziland’s sugar exports. This implies that the above-mentioned factors have contributed to the sugar trade flows increase during the time period under study. On the other hand, importer’s population, Swaziland openness and distance between Swaziland and her trading partner’s capital cities had a significant negative effect on Swaziland’s sugar export flows. It is therefore recommended that policies that lead to the exceptional advancement of the Swaziland and importer’s economy should be promoted which will have an effects on the Swaziland GDP and importer’s GDP. Trading with less self-sufficient, neighbouring countries and deepening the economic integration processes enhances Swaziland sugar exports flows.
The agricultural sector in Eswatini is viewed as an engine to foster economic growth, reduce poverty and eradicate inequality. The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of monetary policy on the agriculture Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Eswatini using annual data for the period starting from 1980 to 2016. Using the Vector Error Correction model (VEC), the empirical results indicated that in the long run, agriculture GDP, exchange rate, interest rate, inflation, broad money supply, and agriculture credit have a negative effect on agriculture GDP in Eswatini. In the short run the study indicated that the variation in agriculture GDP is largely significant caused by the lagged agricultural GDP, interest rate, exchange rate as well as inflation. Money supply and agriculture credit contribute 0.46% and 0.55%, respectively to the variation in agricultural GDP. The study recommends that programs aimed at availing affordable credit to farmers should be prioritized to cushion the agriculture sector against adverse monetary policy shocks in the short to medium term, specifically interest rates, to ensure continuous production.
Globalization and liberalization puts the emphasis on exports as a technique in which developing countries like the Kingdom of Eswatini should adopt to expand their markets beyond their domestic market. For the developing countries to be international competitive in the global markets they need to minimize their production cost particularly on the products that are being exported. The production of most of the exported commodities needs lot energy from oil; hence there has been tremendous increase of oil and its by-product worldwide. The current oil demand for most countries in the world is not met because of insufficient reserves for crude oil in most countries. The Kingdom of Eswatini does not have an oil reserves or oil-refining facilities hence they depends on imports from the neighbouring states in order to meet the consumption requirement. The oil price shocks in the global market normally have adversely effects on various macroeconomic variables such as exchange rate since the oil is traded in US dollars. Oil and exchange rate are considered to be essential factors for domestic economies for developing countries like the Kingdom of Eswatini. The purpose of the study is to investigate the causal relationship between Lilangeni-dollar exchange rate and crude oil price by using the Toda-Yamamota approach. The study used daily time series from January 01st, 2005 to April 30th, 2018 of nominal exchange rate of Lilangeni (Eswatini currency [SZL]) vis-à-vis United States dollar (USD) data as well as the global price of Brent crude oil data that was used as a proxy for the Global crude oil price. The results from the Toda-Yamamoto Granger causality test revealed that there is a unidirectional causality from the global oil price to the Eswatini’s nominal exchange rate (SZL/USD). Hence the study concluded that the global crude oil price influence the Eswatini’s nominal exchange rate. Therefore the study recommends that in the formulating of Eswatini’s exchange rate policy emphases should be on the global oil prices in order not to misalign the Eswatini’s currency.
Women make essential contributions to the agricultural and rural economies in most developing countries including Eswatini yet they are the most visible face of poverty. As a strategy of empowering women to up-lift them from abject poverty, “Luhlelo Lolunotsisa Temabhizinisi” (LULOTE) has developed business management training programs for rural women smallholder farmers to enhance their entrepreneurship spirit and skills. The LULOTE in English can be interpreted as a program that helps businesses to advance/prosper. It is a Non-Governmental Organization was established in 1986 in Eswatini to promote entrepreneurial culture and inspire entrepreneurs. This paper ought to find out the contributions of business management trainings on the level of entrepreneurial spirit and skills of women smallholder farmers as its main objective. Data was collected through the use of questionnaires and personal interviews with a sample size of 120 farmers. Descriptive statistics and the Ordinary Least Square (OLS) multiple regression models were used as methods of analysis. The results of this study indicate that most farmers interviewed were aged above 49 years, married (40%), and primary school dropout (mean of 6 years in school), spent an average of 10 years in farming and at least 50% on average indicated that farming was their main occupation. Results further revealed that the trained women by LULOTE had a higher entrepreneurial spirit than the non-trained women scoring an average index of 3.45 and 2.77, respectively. The LULOTE trained women also were rated higher with a 3.50 score compared to the non-trained rated at 3.01 scores. The determinants of level of entrepreneurial spirit among sampled women included age of respondent, level of education, farming as major occupation, and incomes from remittances. Determinants of level of entrepreneurial skills among sampled women included, farming income, off-farm income and previous job of the respondent. Based on the independent T-test results, there was a significant difference in the statements mean scores related to the level of farmers’ entrepreneurial spirit & Skills between LULOTE members and non-LULOTE members at 1% and 5% level. Therefore, the research concludes that LULOTE trainings greatly contributed to improving the entrepreneurial spirit and skills of the women. Since there is an observable positive result of training women, all stakeholders including government, private sector, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), among others should increase on the training programs for all farming age groups including the youth.
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