Ramaphosa announces R500bn rescue package
A staggering R500bn will be spent to support South Africans dealing with the consequences of the coronavirus.
Making the announcement in a late-night address to the nation, President Cyril Ramaphosa said this amounted to “about 10% of our GDP”.
He described it as massive social and economic support.
He said the impact of the coronavirus required an extraordinary budget.
“This will include the reprioritising of about R130bn within our current budget,” Ramaphosa said.
“The rest of the funds will be raised from both local sources, such as the Unemployment Insurance Fund, and from global partners and international financial institutions.”
He said the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Brics bank and the African Development Bank had been approached and were working with the Treasury on various funding transactions.
Ramaphosa said that child support grant beneficiaries would receive an extra R300 next month, and R500 a month from June to October.
All other beneficiaries would get an additional R250 a month for the next six months.
There would also be a distress grant of R350 for the next six months, which would be paid to people who were unemployed and did not receive other income payments.
Ramaphosa said R100bn would also be spent on trying to secure jobs.
“Despite several interventions to deal with extremely high unemployment ... these are not enough.
“The coronavirus will lead to many people losing their jobs.
“An additional R100bn will be set aside for protection of jobs, and to create jobs,” he said.
The government is also going to inject an extra R20bn into the national health budget to shore up its efforts to slow transmission of Covid-19 and ramp up its capacity to care for the sick.
Ramaphosa also said that the government was going to reopen the economy — with the plans to be announced in two days’ time.
“On Thursday, I will address the nation on the measures that will be taken beyond the nationwide lockdown to reopen the economy,” he said.
The government would take a risk-adjusted approach to getting the economy restarted, balancing the need to limit the spread of the virus with the need to get people back to work.
“As I’ve said before, if we end the lockdown too soon or too abruptly, we risk a massive and uncontrollable resurgence of the disease.
“We will therefore follow a phased approach, based on the best available scientific information, to gradually lift the restrictions on economic activity,” he said.
“We remain firm in our resolution to contain the transmission of the virus.
“We must act with agility and flexibility in the the weeks and months ahead.”
Ramaphosa is also set to deploy about 73,000 more soldiers onto SA’s streets, at a cost of R4.59bn.
This was revealed earlier in a letter to MPs sitting in the defence portfolio committee.
DA leader John Steenhuisen and MP Dean Macpherson both shared the letter on Twitter.
MPs from two other political parties also confirmed the authenticity of the letter.
The reason for the extra deployment, Ramaphosa said, was because the number of coronavirus infections continued to increase in SA, despite the nationwide lockdown.
“On March 25, I authorised the employment of 2,820 members of the SA National Defence Force for a service in co-operation with the SA Police Service in order to maintain law and order, support other state departments and to control our border line to combat the spread of Covid-19 in all nine provinces,” Ramaphosa wrote.
“The outbreak of Covid-19 continues to increase.
“As a result I have decided ... to employ an additional 73,180 members of the SANDF, consisting of the regular force, reserve force and auxiliary force.
“The employment of the additional members of the SANDF is for the period of April 2 to June 26.”