Finance Minister Delivers Weak Budget Statement
24 October 2018
Today’s medium term budget statement presented by Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni in parliament was a missed opportunity to address the challenges our economy faces - it was weak, lacked substantive measures on debt servicing costs and he presented nothing new on improving State Owned Entities (SOEs) and strengthening accountability measures across the board.
On the implementation of the President’s Stimulus Package, the Minister failed to provide substantive details and very little focus was placed on the National Development Plan, thus, this recovery plan exists in a complete vacuum.
We further note the following with serious concern:
There is no contingency reserves - funds have all been used up – Should our country face a major disaster – or any emergency - we will not be able to fund relief efforts or meet demands thereof;