Opposition parties slam Mboweni’s Budget
OPPOSITION parties have fired a broadside at Finance Minister Tito Mboweni after he delivered his budget speech, saying it failed to deal with South Africa’s economic crisis.
The DA, EFF, PAC and Good Party said more could have been done to get the economy out of the woods.
DA MP Geordin Hill-Lewis said Mboweni had cut billions in social grants in order to fund SAA – the economy was ailing and Mboweni continued to bail out state-owned entities.
The EFF said Mboweni should have increased corporate taxes.
“You should have gone for those guys to collect more taxes from them.”
That was the EFF’s cry after Mboweni announced a corporate tax rate cut from 28% to 27% in his 2021 Budget speech yesterday.
Mboweni said the corporate income tax rate would be lowered to 27% for companies with years of assessment commencing on or after April 1, 2022, while the personal income tax brackets will be increased by 5%, which is more than inflation.
He said that would provide R2.2 billion in tax relief. Most of that relief would reduce the tax burden on lower and middle-income households.
EFF MP Mbuyiseni Ndlozi said there had been nothing in Mboweni’s budget that would result in the transformation of the structure of South Africa’s economy, which was characterised by chronic unemployment and a lack of large-scale industrialisation.
“There were fundamental problems that relate to illicit financial flows that the Budget said nothing about, I mean you collect taxes from a very insignificant industry called tobacco and you leave the big mines, big auditing firms, so there’s nothing in the Budget that’s going to the fundamental changes that are required in South Africa’s economy.
“They’re trying to go back to a pre Covid-19 situation, which is totally unattainable, you will never be able to see that. Corporate income tax was left as it is. You should have gone for those guys to collect more taxes from them,” Ndlozi said.
He said that those taxes should have been redirected to government expenditure that was going to lead to industrialisation and local production.