Finance Minister Trevor Manuel says the global economic crisis is not likely to be over shortly.
‘I am one of those pessimists,” he told the National Assembly on Thursday, ‘who does not think this issue is going to be resolved in the next year or two years. I think we are in for a pretty long haul, as we try to get the world economy through the trough.”
Replying to the first reading debate on the Appropriations Bill which he tabled in the house a week ago and which sets out his annual budget spending proposals, Manuel added that the recommendations proposed by the opposition Democratic Alliance’s Dion George were like the economic prescriptions which were offered in the US from January 2001 to January 2009 — the period of the administration of George Bush.
‘It’s a period during which you have the complete attrition of the state. The unfettered control of markets and the excesses that the world has lived through,” the minister said
He stressed that there has to be a moral dimension to economic policy. ‘Consider the fact that there are 43 million people there who do not have access to healthcare because they are uninsured,” he said.
‘Consider the myriads of people who are just disgorged without much protection beyond a short period of unemployment insurance. Just disgorged, because the labour markets are as free and unregulated as they obtain there. Consider the vast differences between the schools for the rich and schools for the poor.”
He also suggested that there are features that are exceedingly worrying in the legislation signed two days ago by President Barack Obama. ‘They are highly protectionist and highly nationalist, and take that country back as though it is not part of this global entity,” he said.
The Bill which was given a first reading will have to be revived by a resolution of the house after the coming election. — I-Net Bridge