By Zweli Martin Dlamini

MBABANE:King Mswati’s international trips are allegedly digging deeper into the public coffers, businesses within the Small and Medium Enterprise(SME) sometimes wait for over six(6) months without any payment, an independent investigation reveals.

It has been disclosed that,the situation has deteriorated such that,some businesses had to shut down while some are struggling to pay salaries for employees.

This comes after Government Purchase Orders continue to increasingly lose value with banks and as a result, can no-longer be reliably used to secure an overdraft with the various financial institutions.

An overdraft is a short-term loan with a reasonable interest that is normally offered by banks to assist small businesses pay bills or deliver services or goods pending payments from clients, the overdraft is payable immediately after the payment of the due invoices.

But a businessperson who spoke to this Swaziland News this week alleged that, every-time the King takes an international trip, officials within the Treasury Department under the Ministry of Finance would tell them, their payments won’t be processed because money has been transferred to the King.

“They recently told me, they cant pay me because the King took R100million as his pocket money when going to Italy”, said the source.

Efforts to reach Vusi Dlamini, the Principal Secretary(PS) in the Ministry of Finance proved unsuccessful at the time of compiling this report.

This publication previously reported that apart from the alleged King’s ‘pocket money’, the recent trip came at a cost of over R200million from public coffers.

When asked by this Swaziland News to clarify why Mswati continues to take international trips that result to cash-flow challenges including the struggle to pay Government suppliers, King’s Spokesperson Percy Simelane denied the allegations adding that, King Mswati normally uses money that “is within his budget”.

Simelane further said, each Ministry “is normally allocated a budget” and members of the King’s delegation from the various Ministries normally receive allowances not from the King’s budget but, directly from their Departments being monies that were also budgeted for.

“Each Ministry and Department are allocated a budget which they  prepare for around this time of the year for the next Fiscal Year.The King’s Office gets its own budget that includes international engagements funds. Our experience  is that money budgeted for paying suppliers strictly caters for that and not the King’s international engagements.The majority of the people who travel with the King come from different relevant  ministries.Their bills are covered by their Ministries.They have different roles to play during each international engagements involving the Head of State.People or critics normally base their arguement on the numbers they see and not on the roles. We suspect that,given a chance, they would cut out the pilots even yet there is no travelling without them”, said the King’s Spokesperson.

On another note, businesses within the SME sector continue to face financial challenges amid Government failure to pay suppliers.