‘Treasury failed to respond decisively to SA’s challenges’

Describing the 2024-25 budget as “underwhelming”, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) yesterday said National Treasury has treated it as “little more than a bean-counting exercise”.

It had failed to respond decisively to the myriad of challenges workers, society, the economy and the state faced, it said.

Cosatu – a member of the political Tripartite Alliance with the governing ANC and South African Communist Party – said the budget had failed tragically “to meet the existential crises with the boldness they require”.

“By Treasury’s own admission, the economy is projected to grow between 1.3% and 1.8% over the medium-term expenditure framework [MTEF].

“The recent State of the Nation Address made a variety of progressive commitments, yet Treasury has seemingly baulked on these,” said Cosatu national spokesperson Matthew Parks.

“The reason we are in a crisis is because the economy is not growing and unemployment remains dangerously high. The growth in debt is a symptom, not a cause of this.

“The solution is to stimulate the economy, reduce unemployment, provide relief to the poor, rebuild the state – tackling crime and corruption,” said Parks.

Cosatu, he said, supported government’s agreement with the Reserve Bank to release R150 billion from its reserves to ease the fiscal pressures.

“It is critical these reserves be used strategically to stabilise and rebuild Eskom and Transnet in particular, as this can only be a once-off relief and needs to be utilised to grow the economy, reducing unemployment.

“Key to growing the economy, is to remove the network and logistics obstacles inhibiting it.

“We welcome progress in providing Eskom R253 billion worth of debt relief...

“To turn the corner on load shedding, government needs to fast-track the roll-out of the planned 14 000 kilometres in new transmission lines, which will help unlock renewable energy generation investments.”

While there has been “some progress in easing port congestion over the past few months, Transnet, including its Freight Rail, continues to struggle to transport goods to their markets timeously”.

“This is having a major impact on the mining, manufacturing and agricultural sectors, which are not only key sources of jobs, but also [provide] taxes the state depends upon.

“Government needs to move faster to help Transnet turn things around. We hope the R47 billion loan guarantee provided to it will help,” he said.

The SA Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) said it welcomed the above-inflation increases in social grants.

“However, we remain dissatisfied that National Treasury has not increased the child grants to the food poverty line of R760, let alone to the level at which it can afford a nutritious food basket for children, which is calculated at R827.

“Though promising to improve the social relief of distress grant, the minister did not announce anything concrete on it.

“Saftu continues to call for a basic income grant at the upper bound poverty line of R1 558,” said Saftu national spokesperson Trevor Shaku.

Saftu, he said, was “disappointed” that the National Treasury was not planning to increase budgets of the “key” departments of basic education, health, social development and correctional services over the MTEF 2023-24 to 2026-27.

“The health department’s budget will decline by 1.3% in real terms,” he said.

“The greatest impact of this decline is projected to be in the procurement of equipment and machinery, which are essential for the smooth operation of hospitals.

“It means, more than 80% of the population using public health care facilities will still be disadvantaged from receiving quality health care services,” said Shaku.