The upcoming medium-term budget should offer us a meaningful peek into government thinking
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. Picture: ESA ALEXANDER/ SUNDAY TIMES
For example, by the time Godongwana delivered his budget speech on February 23 it was already evident that Russia would invade Ukraine within days . It had been likely from as far back as October 2021, when the minister delivered the previous MTBPS. As a result of Russia’s invasion the prices of key commodities such as oil, grain and fertiliser shot up, making inflation a real challenge. This was in addition to Covid-related global supply chain constraints that were already pushing prices up across the world.
In February’s budget the provision for debt service costs was just over R363bn for the current financial year, and an average of R333bn a year over the medium term. A growing national debt is not a problem if the economy and state revenues are growing faster. But in our case the government will be hard pressed to ensure debt repayments do not exceed critical interventions required to stimulate labour-absorbing growth so that people can make a decent living.
Improving these people’s job prospects requires a fundamental rethink of the sector education & training authority system, specifically how it can be geared to prioritise low and medium skills level industries, where SA has a reasonable prospect of succeeding. We need properly funded public employment schemes that combine school-level and post-school vocational training with employer incentives to provide on-the-job training.
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