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/ 20 February 2004
Under his immaculate suit Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel was most probably wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt when he presented the Budget to Parliament this week. While Manuel has clearly not gone back to the Guevara-like economics once espoused by the African National Congress, in the past three to four years his stance has shifted toward a recognition that the state must play a bigger role in the economy in developing countries.
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/ 20 February 2004
The general secretary of the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu), Cunningham Ngcukana, is expected to leave the federation to assume a senior position in the secretariat of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) at the beginning of April.
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/ 20 February 2004
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>Intelligence operatives are keeping their eyes and ears on the ground to collect information about how South Africans feel about the upcoming elections. And the verdict is a good one. "There’s no reason to fear there’s any threat to destabilise the elections," Minister of Intelligence Lindiwe Sisulu announced on Thursday.
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/ 20 February 2004
Three people have died and close to 200 have been infected by an outbreak of anthrax in Zimbabwe, according to the <i>Science In Africa</i> news website. The outbreaks have been linked to the uncontrolled movement of cattle by new settlers benefiting from the government’s controversial land redistribution programme.
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/ 20 February 2004
Local government must implement new financial reporting measures from July. These include submitting quarterly reports to the National Treasury and posting them on their council websites, to better track revenue and spending. Municipalities spend too much on salaries and not enough on services.
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/ 20 February 2004
When former MP Pregs Govender first proposed a gender-responsive budget a decade ago, she warned that without ongoing political commitment to this initiative, it would be wiped out as yet another "public relations exercise". While the government is committed to social spending, it continues to gloss over protection against gender inequalities.
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/ 20 February 2004
Budget 2004 was "growth-friendly", without necessarily acting as a direct spur to economic growth, a key economic analyst said on Thursday. Iraj Abedian, chief economist of Standard Bank, observed that growth was ultimately driven by forces like the global economy.
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/ 20 February 2004
Although the Budget provides for an increase of 5% in further education and training (FET) spending per province, independent researchers believe that the money remains inadequate to deal with the challenges facing the sector. Details of the education vote suggest that most of the increased support will benefit schools, not colleges.
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/ 20 February 2004
Over the past few years the Treasury and the government have improved in making information on the Budget, the allocation of state resources and programmes available to the public timeously and in detail. However, we should not confuse this effusive sharing of information with public participation in the Budget and fiscal policy formulation.
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/ 20 February 2004
The government will be hard pressed to meet its land restitution deadline of 2005 with the Cinderella budget Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel awarded to the Department of Land Affairs, a land reform expert told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>.
Ruth Hall, from the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape, called the allocation disappointing.