Importance of financial institutions stressed

THE national Treasury and other similar financial institutions are critical and should not be messed with, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said yesterday.

He was addressing journalists a few hours before delivering his budget speech.

Gordhan seemed unfazed at speculation of a cabinet reshuffle, which could see him or his deputy Mcebisi Jonas make way for Brian Molefe.

“Am I going to be fired? Do you know something I don’t know?” Gordhan asked in response to a question on his uncertain future.

He said the Treasury was a highly professional institution and treasuries and finance departments were virtually indispensable.

“It is in the interest of generations of South Africans to [understand] that there are [a] couple of institutions that you don’t, in inverted commas, ‘mess with’,” Gordhan said.

Does it matter who is a minister in a particular department?

“It depends where you are. We work very well as a team, so I suppose it does matter in terms of the kind of ideas that are generated,” Gordhan said.

“One of the things is that it can take many years to build a solid institution. It takes a very short time to mess it up. You can spend 10, 20 years building for what you think is resilience.

“Overnight someone can come in, dismantle this and say ‘I don’t like it’.”

Gordhan’s deputy, Mcebisi Jonas, said political decay reflects itself more strongly in the strengths of institutions.

“The more there is political decay in the country, and I’m not suggesting there is, you will have to judge for yourself, but you would actually see the impact of it and how strong institutions begin to be,” Jonas said .

Treasury director-general Lungisa Fuzile warned on the impact of the high turnover of finance ministers on treasury staff morale.

Fuzile has headed the national Treasury for about six years and has already served under four different ministers, from Trevor Manuel to Des van Rooyen, who lasted for a few days.