‘Give comrades the boot’
ECONOMIST: SA WILL RECOVER WITH LESS CIVIL SERVANTS, MINISTERS
Cut ministers and civil servants to the bone and pay those that survive far less – only then can SA hope to recover economically, says a leading economist.
‘Scrap small business, women. What does a minister do beside waste money?’
The DA’s seven point recession recovery plan may have some merit, but it fails to address the real elephants in the room: the massively bloated civil service and Cabinet, according to a leading economist.
Economist Dawie Roodt believes the only way to recover the economy is by drastically pruning the civil servants and by paying civil servants less.
“Politicians always want to tell us how to decrease taxes, and how to spend less,” Roodt said. “What none of them are willing to do though, is address the elephant in the room, and that is that we simply have too many civil servants.
“They need to stop pussy-footing around and admit that the only way to fix things is by spending less and getting rid of some of them.”
DA leader Mmusi Maimane yesterday proposed his party’s recession recovery plan, following the announcement by StatsSA that the economy was now in a technical recession.
The DA’s plan represents little more than political posturing, since they are not the governing party, and the party hoped to entice South Africans with evidence of their plans to govern and create jobs.
Maimane said their proposals “represent a change in approach from the belief that more state intervention is the only antidote to the failure of previous state intervention. Instead, we pursue a lean, capable state that create conditions that promote investment in a broadly open, competitive, market-driven economy.”
“A healthy, growing economy will be able to collect the taxes required to fund better education and healthcare systems, a compassionate welfare programme, effective land reform and restitution programmes, and an effective police service, trained, resourced, and equipped to be able to maintain law and order, and keep people safe,” Maimane said.
Roodt, however, believes the DA’s plan, with a few exceptions, is not nearly enough to pull the country out of it’s economic quandary.
According to former finance minister Malusi Gigaba’s 2017 budget speech, the total government wage bill stood at R587 billion, and it was expected to grow to R630 billion by 2020.
This represented a growth of 10.3% annually since 2009.
In May this year, Public Service and Administration Minister Ayanda Dlodlo warned that salaries for public servants have been growing at rates higher than inflation and swallowed up 35% of government expenditure in 2017.
Reducing this, Roodt says, is the only possible remedy for the country’s financial woes.
“Spending less is the only way,”
he told The Citizen. “But no politician – not even the opposition – is willing to say it, because they fear the backlash.
“But what is very important is for all to understand one thing: we are in very deep trouble, and I personally don’t see us getting out of it.”
Roodt also recommends a drastic cut to the number of Cabinet positions.
Instead of the cut to 15 members the DA proposed, he believes fewer than six ministers should suffice.
Roodt says government could do with only the ministries of health; education; police, defence and correctional services; infrastructure and local government, finance, and a deputy president, in charge of government business.
“Scrap small business, women, and all the rest. What on earth does a minister of sport do beside waste money?”