IMF SAYS SA BADLY NEEDS A CREDIBLE FISCAL CONSOLIDATION PLAN
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa will face more fiscal difficulties and higher financing costs should state-owned companies’ debt continue rising and if the nation’s local debt is downgraded to junk, the International Monetary Fund says.
If state entities such as cash-strapped power utility Eskom and South African Airways request more state support, the government will have to step in to help, removing fiscal space for “more socially useful activities,” says Montfort Mlachila, the lender’s senior resident representative in the country.
“If the current fiscal problems are not addressed soon enough, it will obviously worsen the market sentiment and could increase the financing costs,” he says. “If nothing is done between now and the budget presentation in February, then things will become a lot more difficult on the fiscal front.”
Last month, Treasury almost halved its economic growth forecast for this year, to 0.7 percent, and said debt was predicted to rise.
The deteriorating trajectory threatens to trigger a downgrade of SA’s rand-denominated securities to junk by S&P Global Ratings and Moody’s Investors Service.
Fitch Ratings already assesses the local-currency debt as sub-investment grade.
SA projects a revenue shortfall of R50.8bn for the current fiscal year, which ends in March, and sees public debt exceeding 60 percent of gross domestic product by 2021.
Despite the predicted widening fiscal gaps, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba did not want to “deviate irretrievably from the fiscal consolidation agenda”, he said in his medium-term budget presented on October 25.
The country has not approached the IMF for help, Mlachila says. “If SA were to come to the IMF, we would obviously be ready to assist.”