Martin Dlamini, Minister for Finance, says an agreement has been reached on the issue of the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) revenue sharing formula.

He said with the new formula, countries will get a fair share of revenue from the pool and that the previous disagreements over the sharing of the revenue were sorted out in the SACU Council of ministers meeting held in the latter part of January 2015. Countries in the SACU economic bloc include Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa.

The recent meeting was a follow up to a gathering that was hosted on December 10 and 11, 2014 which did not conclude on the revenue share for each country in the SACU pool.

A conclusion could not be reached then because there were disagreements on how the money was to be shared. The other reason was that South Africa was not part of the meeting. Dlamini said following the successful meeting, the focus was now on calculating how much each country would get from the SACU pool of revenue. The minister said he was not sure how the agreed formula would affect Swaziland’s share for the next financial year 2015/16.

“I am not yet certain whether revenue due to Swaziland will drop or increase.” However, according to previous projections on the revenue due to countries in the pool, countries should expect a drop in their share of revenue. Bheki Bhembe, Principal Secretary (PS) in the Ministry of Finance, said the downward risks emanated from the performance of South Africa’s economy.