The Municipal Council of Mbabane (MCM) recorded an income of E167 million in the 2024/25 financial year, an increase of 4% compared to the past year.
Director of Finance Mfanafuthi Bhembe said they also saw an increase of 7% on the total expenditure to E164 million.
He was speaking during the MCM Annual General Meeting (AGM) where he presented the institution’s audited financial statement.
Bhembe revealed that cash and cash equivalents increased by about 30% to over E65 million due to decrease in trade and other receivables, which meant there were payments received in terms of area rates.
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He said they did not acquire many loans in the year under review, but there were repayments on those that they currently have, hence the 25% reduction and improvement in the borrowing ratio.
Under finance income, he explained that there was a slight decrease of 1% and the finance cost decreased significantly by 18%.
The director added that the expenditure figure was made of three groups of expenses; staff costs, depreciation and operating costs, which were at 34%, 10% and 55%, respectively.
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He explained that these expenses were towards infrastructure maintenance, pothole patching, drain cleaning, street lighting and more.
He added that there was also environment management like litter picking, waste management as well as overgrowth management.
“On the net finance income taking away the finance costs, the net effect of that was an increase of about 27% to E3.3 million. On the balance sheet, we saw our trade and other receivables dropping by about 10% which is a welcome reduction, but we are still worried that that figure is still above the E100 million mark.
“There wasn’t much in terms of investment towards our property, plant and equipment, hence the 1% decrease. “Even though there was a minimum investment that we have done to our PPE, that will mean somehow we are able to recoup some money in terms of our cash,” Bhembe said.
Council collects E255m from rates
DIRECTOR of Finance Mfanafuthi Bhembe stated that there was an increase of about 5%, reaching E255 million in their rates revenue.
He said this was due to some adjustments made on the rate tariff of 5% from the tariffs they were charging previously.
He said looking at other operating incomes, the figures were comparable between the two years, but they noticed a slight drop of about 1% this year.
However, there were other user fees or the service charges that were developed around 2014 and they were approved in 2018.
He noted that there was a new user fee programme that they were developing.
He said the rates data increased by over E6 million, hence the provision of about E6.2 million. He noted that some private ratepayers in particular were sluggish in terms of payment of the rates.
“We are able to recoup the cost of providing that service from the revenue that we will be getting from those services so that there will be no over-reliance on the rates. The same revenue could see the expenditure increase to about E164 million and operating surplus decreased to about E2.6 million.
There were some investments we did to our property, land and equipment, but it was minimal this year because last year we reported a huge investment we made on PPE on two major roads, one being the Shongololo Road. However, this year there wasn’t much in terms of investment towards our PPE,” he added. He noted that the institution’s liabilities decreased by about 3%, to reach E81 million during the year. He further noted that there was a provision for bad debts as well as other miscellaneous data.
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