The local government elections form part of the feedback South Africans have been giving about the state of the country and the economy
Finance minister Enoch Godongwana. File photo: GALLO IMAGES/ALET PRETORIUS
Over the last few years the common message from the elite has been that we have now entered a new “Age of Austerity” which means the people must tighten their belts.
The Nasrec conference called for a paradigm shift from the current neoliberal trajectory and mandated the ANC government to develop a new economic growth path with an industrial strategy at its core, as part of the review of the existing macro and micro economic policies. We therefore hope the Treasury seizes this opportunity to positively adjust its deficit and debt containment targets. In other words, we call on the Treasury to abandon its current austerity approach of subordinating all the socioeconomic challenges the country is facing to the narrow focus on its primary budget surplus and debt containment targets.
The Treasury needs to come out clearly in the MTBPS on how it plans to fight corruption and improve the management of limited state resources. It must appreciate that in addition to allocating funds from the fiscus it has an ethical duty to see to it the money is used for its designated purposes, and where there are persistent less-than-clean audits that it proactively supports capacity building and accountability during the bidding phase of the budget process.
Despite the fact that everybody agreed that SA’s economy was less affected by the 2008-09 financial meltdown because of the remaining exchange controls, the National Treasury has since relaxed exchange controls further, exposing our currency to international capital flows and speculators.
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