Medium-term budget: ANC government in checkmate position
28 October 2020
The harsh reality behind Minister Tito Mboweni's medium-term budget that he announced today is that the fiscus does not have any money left and the Minister's manipulation of the budget comes down to nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The Minister clearly finds himself in a checkmate position. This is evident as the budget deficit already amounts to R770 billion. The government's total debt burden now amounts to a staggering R3,9 trillion (trillion = billion billion). And it will spike to R5,8 trillion by the end of the current medium financial term.
The service fees on the debt amount alone already add up to R233 billion per year and are expected to increase to R355 billion per year by 2023/24. Simply put, the country has run out of money.
The Minister has his back against the wall and yet he still allocates R10,4 billion, which should have gone to local government, to the SAA as an umpteenth lifeline, despite the fact that municipal services across the country are terrible. People do not have access to water and there are sanitation problems everywhere.