TAKE YOUR MONEY OUT OF SA, SAYS ECONOMIST
JOHANNEBURG This is the shattering advice given by Efficient Group’s chief economist Dawie Roodt following the release of the auditorgeneral’s report on national irregular expenditure.
The report showed that irregular expenditure increased 55 percent since the previous year to R45.6billion and could rise to as high as R65bn.
Auditor-general Kimi Makwetu said this amount could be even higher as it did not include the irregular expenditure where audits were still ongoing. This included the Passenger Rail Association of SA, at which irregular expenditure last year was almost R14bn.
KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and Limpopo were among the provinces that were the main contributors to the significant increase in irregular expenditure.
The sectors with the highest amounts of irregular expenditure were health at R11.77bn, transport at R6.38bn and education at R6.09bn.
In addition, the auditorgeneral reported that 25 percent of the auditees disclosed that they had incurred irregular expenditure but that the full amount was not known, while 28 auditees were qualified as the amount they had disclosed was incomplete.
Honing in on the report, Roodt said that the country had reached a stage at which it could no longer afford such outcomes.
“This is the taxpayers’ money that is being misspent, which means that the state needs to cut back on its expenditure. This country is in dire straits,” he said.
Roodt predicted that the country would soon be downgraded which would force the economy into recession. According to his calculations, the state needed to cut its expenses by 6 percent to 8 percent next year, “which is highly unlikely.”
“We have basically reached the end of the line and pushing the economy into recession would be the only option. You have to be cruel to be kind, but politicians don’t think like this.
"The best advice I give to my clients and will tell to your readers is take your money out of the country,” Roodt said.
At a national level, there was a slight improvement in the outcomes with the number of clean audits increasing to 30 percent of the total population. – UNDAY INDEPENDENT.