REACTION TO MTBPS
BUSINESS UNITY SA (BUSA)
BUSA VIEWS Tito Mboweni’s MTBPS as an honest and comprehensive reality check for South Africa to address its macro-economic and fiscal fundamentals to prevent further deterioration in growth and reverse negative trends.
The MTBPS comes on the eve of SA’s Investment Conference and correctly emphasises the imperative to ease the regulatory burden of doing business and put in place interventions that will stimulate investment into the country.
Statistics SA data on 2018 second quarter GDP shows that the country entered a technical recession and documented a decline in gross fixed-capital formation, which is a key enabler of growth.
Policy and regulatory certainty are critical mechanisms through which to stimulate investment.
Busa welcomed the reinforcement of the National Development Plan as South Africa’s blueprint policy document, as well as the commitment to relook at the regulatory obstacles to investment and doing business in the country.
OUTA
THE ORGANISATION Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) has described Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s mid-term budget as a laudable attempt to tackle South Africa’s financial crisis and clean up the mess left by former president Jacob Zuma’s administration.
“This is an economy-stimulating, corruption-fighting speech that recognises the need to deal with declining governance and malfeasance across all levels of government and the reprioritisation of R50 billion for infrastructure projects without increasing expenditure,” said chief executive Wayne Duvenage.
He said they also welcomed efforts to address the R32bn overspending on the public sector wage bill, along with initiatives to lighten the load on the poor and vulnerable.
These included the zero-rating of VAT on essentials such as sanitary pads, bread flour and cake flour; the promise to provide proper toilets and schools for pupils; funding for more health professionals and investment in labour-intensive agriculture sector to drive job creation.
“We are extremely pleased with plans to beef up the capacity of Sars and the promises of action against those who steal and waste funds,” said Duvenage.
“However, we need less talk and more action in this regard.”
He said while most of Mboweni’s MTBPS was encouraging and focused on alleviating a strained economy, the former Reserve Bank governor missed the plot on retaining e-tolls and in bailing out the state airlines by R6.2bn.
“This budget offers no solution to the failed e-tolls project, other than to reshuffle an extra R5.75bn to pay Gauteng Freeway Improvement Project debts,” Duvenage said.
COSATU
LABOUR federation Cosatu described Mboweni’s mini budget as underwhelming when considering the fiscal, revenue, corruption and expenditure crises dogging South Africa.
Spokesperson Sizwe Pamla said the MTBPS did not go far enough in addressing the crises facing government, workers and the economy.
“The reality is that we are in an economic crisis and this crisis can only be understood by looking at the root causes in a holistic way,” he said.
“The solution to our economic problems lies in bold measures of transformation, not in marginal programmes and projects.”
However, SACP spokesperson Alex Mashilo said: “We need to ensure that, in approaching this crisis, we do not choke off any prospect for real job-creating recovery through excessively conservative macro-economic policy, or the short-term disposal of key public assets.”