SACP Statement on the 2016 Budget Speech
The South African Communist Party (SACP) has noted the 2016 Budget Speech delivered by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in Parliament on Wednesday 24 February. The Central Committee of the Party’s 13th National Congress will be convening its 15th Plenary Session from Friday to Sunday, 26-28 February, and will discuss the context, content and strategic objectives of the budget.
The Party’s highest decision-making body in between national congresses held once in five years will release a fuller response to the budget on Sunday, 28 February, at a press conference to be held at the Protea Hotel Parktonian, 120 De Korte Street, in Braamfontein, Johannesburg at 12:45pm.
Meanwhile, it is important to underline that the 2016 budget occurred in a difficult time in which commitment to social programmes, state-led strategic infrastructure development programmes, industrial policy actions plans, led by Cabinet ministers involved in the real economy as part of government’s wider efforts to create jobs, was affirmed despite massive fiscal constraints. This in stark contrast to the views propagated by some in the political commentariat who are relegating the said ministers. As a result, they unable to grasp the actual drivers of economic transformation.
The SACP welcomes drought relief efforts. However, the Party wants more emphasis to be placed on sustainable measures, including increased investment in groundwater boreholes where there is availability of water. Decisive steps must also be taken to review water rights and allocations to assert the principle that water resources are a national resource and must benefit all the people.
The SACP welcomes the strong stance taken in the budget and supports the emphasis the Minister has made on strengthening the fight against corruption, maladministration, wasteful spending and the need to ensure proper governance both in the public service and in state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
The SACP reaffirms its policy position that South Africa needs a thriving public sector to secure transformation in the line of development of the Freedom Charter. The Central Committee over the next weekend will discuss the notion of “co-investment” that was raised by the Finance Minister during the Budget Speech.
The SACP maintains that rather than privatisation, which the Party is strongly opposed to, a range of innovations, including Public-Public-Partnership, must be developed to strengthen the role of SOEs as principal instruments to drive the second, more radical phase of our democratic transition. These include consolidating and increasing the number of SOEs and diversification in pursuit of the developmental imperatives of our democratic transition. Therefore measures to establish a state bank, state pharmaceutical company and mining company must be rigorously implemented.
The SACP has noted the assertion by the Minister, that there are “national and provincial entities with diverse property holdings, interests in farming or trading or manufacturing enterprises – often inherited from the pre-1994 dispensation, typically buried in subsidiary companies that are not publicly accountable”. The problem of a lack or absence of public accountability should have been dealt with, and must be solved with immediate effect.
The Central Committee over the weekend will discuss this issue, and the contradiction in the assertion, as it continues, that: “These are unnecessary state investments, and often a drain on government resources. They are also assets with potential for growth in independent hands”. There is no reason in principle why assets with potential growth must be reserved for exploitation by the so-called independent hands and why the state must not develop that potential to its fullest, thus affirming public property rights and benefiting the people as a whole.
Statement issued by the SACP, 24 February 2016
