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Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana.

Godongwana forecasts better revenue, strikes optimist tone in medium term budget

The finance minister announced a lower inflation target of 3%, which the South African Reserve Bank has been pushing for

Equal Education has criticised last week’s medium term budget policy statement for what it said was a failure to provide adequate funding to the education sector. (Madelene Cronje)

Equal Education says mid-term budget will entrench inequality

The advocacy group said despite highlighting infrastructure as one of its main pillars, the policy statement offered little in terms of commitments to fixing school…

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. (David Harrison/M&G)

Pragmatic, pinched budget statement dampens growth hopes

Finance minister Enoch Godongwana forecast 1.8% growth over three years, coupled with a bigger deficit, as debt service costs crowd out fiscal space

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. (David Harrison/M&G)

Cut spending or risk a financial crisis – BLSA

CEO Busi Mavuso said it appeared that only the national treasury understood the need to curtail government spending

Most of us don’t have a clue what all the regulations and municipal by-laws are in the first place, so we walk around perpetually dazed and revert to obeying simpler, smaller rules to make ourselves feel virtuous. (M&G)

Budget constraints paint grim outlook for new police recruits

“A drop in the ocean” as only 15 000 new police recruits are expected for the next three years

South Africa’s treasury is guilty of bad budgeting, and its budgets are criminally incongruous with the vision, policy objectives and goals of the 2012 National Development Plan. (David Harrison/M&G)

MTBPS: Government to take a chunk of Eskom’s debt

The treasury warns that helping the ailing power utility clear its staggering debt won’t fix all its problems

With a take-over of Eskom’s debt looming, the finance minister found no indulgence for other struggling parastatals. (David Harrison, M&G)

Mini-budget: Transnet, Sanral and Denel get lifelines

With a take-over of Eskom’s debt looming, the finance minister found no indulgence for other struggling parastatals

The COVID pandemic highlighted the gaps in South Africa’s health system. (Guillem Sartorio / AFP via Getty Images)

South Africa’s health system is on its knees: the budget offers no relief

There were high expectations that Enoch Godongwana, the Minister of Finance, would signal in the medium term budget policy statement how government planned to mitigate the impact…

Mid-term budget: Nothing for small and medium enterprises but they fight on anyway

SMEs are investing in their growth at a rate we’ve never seen before. That is resilience. It is also a sign of the pent-up growth just waiting to explode into our economy — if…

Holding the line: Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana (centre), who has been in the job for just 100 days, arrives for his mid-term budget presentation to parliament. He said  growth, which relied on economic reforms, was imperative. (Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Godongwana holds off on basic income grant decision, closes taps to state enterprises

Godongwana warns that the outer limits of the budget are non-negotiable as a debt cliff loomed

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. File Photo

Democratic Alliance welcomes Godongwana’s ‘tough love’ for state-owned enterprises

The opposition party referred to the government’s economic policy as ‘hopelessly inadequate’ and an obstacle in the path towards stable public finances

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. Photo: Madelene Cronje

Godongwana tackles debt using tax revenues from commodity surge

The Covid-19 pandemic led to an unprecedented widening of the budget deficit and a spike in debt stock but a commodity price surge gave the treasury room to breathe.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana. (Dwayne Senior/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Godongwana says it will be ‘tough love’ for errant SOEs

The new finance minister said there would be no new bailout for Eskom or other parastatals, with the exception of Denel, which was thrown a lifeline after defaulting on debt to…

Fiscal risk: Ahead of delivering his first MTBPS to parliament, new Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana told reporters he considered failing municipalities one of the big fiscal risks to the state.

Treasury terms failing municipalities a fiscal risk

Enoch Godongwana’s first medium-term budget policy statement includes more funding local government, but with more terms and conditions for after service delivery failures cost…

The MTBPS stresses that there are already 18.3 million citizens who receive one or another form of welfare grant. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Medium-term budget: Basic income grant decision deferred to next year

The finance minister says more grants would mean the money would have to be cut elsewhere as he sticks to fiscal consolidation

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana.

Medium-term Budget: Economic growth prospects remain bleak

Inadequate electricity supply and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic remain a binding constraint on economic recovery in the near term, says the treasury

The official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), said it does not support a permanent expansion of the grant system at this stage.

DA does not support permanent expansion of grants, for now

The Democratic Alliance tabled its ‘alternative’ medium-term budget with its own projections, ahead of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwane’s maiden budget on Thursday

Unions have previously called for higher earners’ salaries, such as those of ministers, to be cut. But the assessment has shown that increases in remuneration have been the fastest for employees on the lowest salary levels and slower for top earners.

Public wage bill is impeding SA’s growth prospects — Busa

Business Unity South Africa is eager to talk to its social partners at Nedlac about how the spiralling public-sector wage bill can be tamed. And the organisation says these talks…

Striking for their rights: Cosatu members protesting in Johannesburg. The trade union federation has previously threatened to dump its alliance with the ANC if planned cuts to the public-sector wage bill go ahead. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Mboweni plans to freeze public sector wage increases for the next three years

The mid-term budget policy statement delivered by the finance minister proposes cutting all non-interest spending by R300-billion.

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni.

Tax, wage bill, debt, pandemic: Mboweni’s tightrope budget policy statement

The finance minister has to close the jaws of the hippo and he’s likely to do this by tightening the country’s belt, again.