Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has been urged by the official opposition Democratic Alliance to focus his Budget — on Wednesday — on job creation.
The DA said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon that the national Budget “should be the most important job-creation tool in government’s box”.
“Yet year after year, finance minister Trevor Manuel presents Budgets which contain precious few direct interventions to break the back of our chronic, 40% unemployment crisis.”
The party challenged Manuel, “who has so successfully turned South Africa’s debt-ridden national accounts into a well-functioning, balanced fiscus, to turn his attention to unemployment and announce a bold set of tax and expenditure reforms designed to create millions of jobs”.
The DA said tax breaks for both companies and individual households, broad reforms of retirement funds and other taxes to encourage domestic and foreign investment, and targeted interventions to grow the country’s skills should be part of a three-pronged attack on joblessness.
“If Manuel breaks the Treasury’s tradition of weak answers to the jobs question with such bold reforms, he will set our economy on a new path of job creation and economic prosperity,” the party said. — I-Net Bridge