Mboweni and Team Finance have laid out what needs to be done to boost the economic growth rate, but the minister himself can't implement the structural reforms recommended in the paper the Treasury published last year.
It was a refrain in the budget review and again in the budget speech: budgets are complex but the numbers are simple. And the numbers were grim - even though it was a bold budget. Finance minister Tito Mboweni did what was right fiscally, pencilling in deep cuts to the personnel budget and calling a halt to major tax hikes. But even if the pay cuts pan out politically, the budget deficit heads towards a psychologically scary 7% and the public debt heads towards 71% and keeps climbing.
And the simple truth of the numbers is that, in an economy growing at just 1% a year, there are no more options. SA spent its way out of the great recession in 2008/2009 and kept spending, particularly on the public sector wage bill but also on bailing out ailing state-owned enterprises , even as economic growth and tax collections kept falling short of budget targets...A subscription gives you full digital access to all Sunday Times content.
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