It's safe to assume everyone reading this column owes somebody money. Perhaps it is the bank for a house. Perhaps it is a car loan. A business loan. Or perhaps it is the less ceremonious kind of debt, a quick loan borrowed from a friend because the month proved longer than the salary.
There is no shame in any of this. Modern economies run partly on credit. Homes are built with it. Businesses expand with it. Governments use it. Families sometimes need it simply because life refuses to arrange its emergencies around payday.
For the past two editions of this column, we have examined the country's public debt, what it costs to service, what Government borrows for and why the purpose of debt can matter as much as its size.
This week, we move to the other side of the economy. Us.
Households and businesses borrow too. And taken together, the Central Bank's monthly statistical releases for the first six months of 2026 allow us to watch how those borrowing habits have been changing.
The picture is revealing. Private-sector credit stood at E22.1 billion in January. By June, it had reached E23.8 billion. Households and businesses were therefore carrying more bank credit at the end of the six-month period than at the beginning.
But the interesting story is not the E1.7 billion difference. It is what happened underneath it.
Household credit stood at approximately E9.3 billion in January. By June, it had reached E9.9 billion and was 11.6% higher than a year earlier. Six hundred million Emalangeni more debt in six months certainly catches the eye. But again, totals can conceal the better story. Look at what households were borrowing for.
Housing loans began the year at about E4.3 billion. Six months later, they were still around E4.3 billion. Motor-vehicle loans moved from roughly E1.4 billion to E1.5 billion.
Then there is other personal, unsecured credit. That started at approximately E3.6 billion in January. February: E3.8 billion. April: E3.9 billion. May: E4.1 billion. June: still about E4.1 billion.
That movement deserves our attention. Not alarm. Attention. Because by June, the amount households owed through other personal unsecured lending was approaching the amount outstanding on housing loans. And those two kinds of borrowing tell very different financial stories.
And this is not a six-month story. Go back through the Bank's releases over the past decade and the shift becomes unmistakable. In 2013, for roughly every three emalangeni households owed on housing, they owed one through unsecured personal lending. The gap narrowed slowly through the decade, quickened during the pandemic years and has kept closing since. By the middle of this year, the two were nearly level. What Eswatini's households borrow for has been quietly changing shape for more than ten years. This year, the lines almost touch.
Not all debt is the same
Take a mortgage. Every month, money disappears from your bank account. Sometimes painfully so. But somewhere there is a house. Twenty years of repayments are attached to an asset that provides somewhere to live and may retain or increase its value over time.
Now consider E5 000 borrowed through an unsecured personal loan. Where is it six months later? There is no single answer. It might have paid school fees. It might have repaired the car that gets someone to work every morning. It might have covered a medical emergency, consolidated more expensive debt, renovated a home or helped a family through a difficult month.
Or it might have financed consumption that disappeared long before the repayment did.
The Central Bank's statistics cannot tell us which. That limitation is important. We should not look at rising unsecured credit and turn it into a morality tale about people spending irresponsibly. The numbers do not establish that.
There is, however, a reason unsecured and quick credit grows so easily. Behavioural research has long shown that credit works partly by separating the pleasure of spending from the pain of paying. The easier the borrowing feels, the less the brain registers the cost. Quick loans are quick in both directions.
What they do show is that unsecured personal borrowing has become an increasingly significant part of household credit. And that changes the question each of us should be asking before taking the next loan.
Not simply: Can I afford the instalment? But, what will remain after I have finished paying it?
Instalments can fool you
This is where lenders and borrowers sometimes speak different financial languages. You need E20 000. The first number you may want to know is: How much per month? Perhaps the answer is E1 100. That sounds manageable.
But an instalment tells you how the cost has been divided. It does not, by itself, tell you what the borrowing costs in total. Stretch the repayment period and the monthly amount can become more comfortable while the total interest paid becomes larger.
That is why anyone taking a quick loan, personal loan or vehicle loan should look beyond the number leaving the account each month. Ask for the total cost of credit. Look at the interest rate. Look at fees. Look at the repayment period. And then perform one brutally simple test: Add up what you will actually repay. E1 100 can feel much smaller than E20 000. Twenty-four E1 100s do not.
Researchers have watched this trap operate. Studies of credit statements show that the mere presence of a minimum payment acts as an anchor. It quietly drags repayments downward, even among people who could comfortably pay more. The small number on the page becomes the suggestion. Do not let it. Decide what you will repay before you look at what you are asked to repay.
And for those already carrying several debts, research offers one more useful finding. Arithmetic says pay the debt with the highest interest rate first. That minimises the total cost, and if discipline comes easily to you, it remains the correct answer.
But studies of households actually working their way out of debt have found something the arithmetic misses. The people most likely to become debt-free were often those who cleared their smallest balances first, closing accounts entirely, one by one. A closed account, it turns out, is fuel. Momentum matters as much as mathematics.
So be honest about your real obstacle. If it is mathematics, pay the expensive debt first. If it is morale, start small and let the victories carry you. The best repayment plan is not the cheapest one on paper. It is the one you will still be following in a year.
Businesses
Businesses tell a different story. Business credit rose from approximately E11.7 billion in January to E12.9 billion in June. Despite dipping from May's E13.2 billion, June business credit remained 10.2% higher than a year earlier.
On its own, that can be encouraging. Businesses often need credit before they can grow. Imagine a small farmer with orders piling up but only enough equipment to fill a fraction of them.
The owner borrows E300 000. A new machine arrives. Production rises. More orders can be filled. Revenue grows. Perhaps another worker is hired. The business now has debt. It also has greater productive capacity.
Now imagine another business borrowing the same E300 000 because every third month there is not enough cash to pay salaries, suppliers and rent.
Same loan. Same E300 000. Completely different financial condition. That is why the SME numbers become particularly interesting.
Credit to SMEs strengthened during the opening months of the year. It stood at about E3.9 billion in January, increased to E4.1 billion in February, E4.3 billion in March and reached approximately E4.4 billion in April.
Then it turned. SME credit declined 4.7% in May and another 7.5% in June. By June, SMEs accounted for 29.7% of total business credit, while large enterprises accounted for 70.3%.
Six months of statistics are not enough to declare that banks are abandoning small businesses or that SMEs suddenly stopped wanting credit. The reports do not establish either conclusion. But the reversal is worth watching. And for the entrepreneur, it reinforces something more immediate.
The question is not merely whether finance is available. It is whether the business is ready for finance. A loan does not repair a weak business model. It magnifies whatever is already there.
If E100 generates E130 reliably, additional capital may allow you to repeat that process at greater scale. If E100 routinely returns E90, borrowed money simply allows you to lose somebody else's E100 before eventually having to repay E120.
Growth financed by debt therefore requires more discipline, not less. Know your margins. Know your cash flow. Know when customers actually pay, not merely when you invoice them.
And before borrowing for expansion, calculate whether the additional cash generated by that expansion comfortably exceeds the additional repayment.
Pattern beneath the numbers
Put households and businesses back beside each other and the first half of 2026 gives us an interesting picture. Household credit rose. Business credit rose. Within households, housing lending remained broadly flat while unsecured personal borrowing increased. Within businesses, SME credit climbed during the first four months and then retreated in May and June, while large enterprises accounted for a greater share of business lending by the end of the period.
None of that proves Eswatini has a private-debt crisis. Nor does rising credit necessarily deserve suspicion. An economy without credit would struggle to build homes, finance businesses or bring tomorrow's productive investments into existence today.
The more useful distinction is between debt that creates capacity and debt that repeatedly covers a gap. And even there we should remain humane. Sometimes covering the gap is necessary. Life happens.
A business can wait three months for a customer to settle an invoice while salaries are due on Friday. A parent can face an expense that cannot be postponed until savings are sufficient. Borrowing can provide breathing room.
The vulnerability comes when breathing room becomes the permanent architecture of our finances. When every month requires next month's money. When every salary arrives carrying repayments from problems already forgotten.
When a business's next loan does not finance its next expansion, but settles the previous loan. That is when debt stops being a bridge. It becomes the road.
What will the debt do?
That brings us back to the question we started with. The Central Bank's first six monthly statistical releases of 2026 do not tell us that Emaswati should stop borrowing. They tell us to become better borrowers.
For households, that means understanding the total cost of debt, being particularly deliberate about unsecured borrowing and asking whether today's loan leaves tomorrow's income stronger or simply smaller.
For SMEs, it means matching the life of the loan to the thing being financed, borrowing against credible cash flow rather than optimism and knowing exactly how the borrowed money will generate the repayment.
And perhaps that is the natural continuation of what this column has been discussing over these past three editions. We began with Government and asked whether the country has a debt problem.
Now we have looked through the other window, at businesses and households. The numbers are different. The borrowers are different. And a sovereign balance sheet should never be mistaken for a household budget. But one question survives the journey between them. What will the debt leave behind?
There will be times when borrowing is the sensible thing to do. There will be others when saying no to available credit is the better financial decision. The bank can tell you whether it is prepared to lend you the money. Only you can answer the more important question. What will the money do once you have it?