MBOWENI’S FEAR
… warns that third Covid-19 wave would hit SA harder than second
JOHANNESBURG - Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has told members of Parliament that while he was hoping for a reprieve, he had it on good authority that a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic was likely to hit South Africa soon, with possibly more catastrophic consequences than those of the second wave.
Mboweni was replying orally to questions from
MPs in a virtual plenary of the National Council of Provinces when he warned that complacency among the general population and delays in implementing muchneeded policy reforms left South Africa ill-equipped to withstand a third wave.
In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent national lockdown - under which South Africa has lived for a year now - left the country’s already battered economy the worse for wear, cutting growth projections even further and driving up unemployment.
Mboweni said even though South Africa needed to focus all its efforts into supporting the economy through President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, he believed a third wave could trigger lockdown escalations, which would undermine such efforts.
“I think we should all keep our fingers crossed that the third wave is not coming, but I believe that it is coming. I believe we learned a lot since being on level 5 to now at level 1, where we are learning some bad lessons because people believe we are not under lockdown anymore.
“I wish we could all cooperate to ensure that we all avoid the third wave. If it comes, it has to be managed in a way that keeps economic activity going.
“I am due to meet with ratings agencies and I plan to tell them that it was unfair of them to downgrade us in the middle of a pandemic,” said Mboweni.
Mboweni said National
Treasury was working closely with the Presidency to ensure government would have a recipe for economic recovery which includes low inflation, low government deficits, low debt levels, high investment, openness of the economy, penetration of technology, good education and anticorruption.