Expectations for Budget2024

As Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana prepares to deliver the national budget allocation for 2024 at the Cape Town City Hall, on Wednesday afternoon, various organisations and political parties weighed in on what they expect the minister to address.

COURTESY - X @parliamentofRSA: Finance Minister, Enoch Godongwana

The GOOD Party’s Brett Herron wants the focus of the Minister’s Budget Speech to be on the country’s economic growth.

‘’South Africa has a poverty crisis, an unemployment crisis and a low economic growth crisis. These crises are all linked to each other and the only way we release South Africans from the poverty trap is by growing our economy and creating jobs.’’

‘’We need at least 5% - 6% economic growth to create employment that will meaningfully reduce the extreme poverty that nearly 18 million South Africans are trapped in. The current projected growth, of 1% this year and 1.3% next year, is insufficient to address unemployment and poverty.’’

‘’The focus of the Minister’s Budget Speech must be our economic growth crisis. If he fails to comprehensively address that crisis then he will doom our country to extended low economic growth and deepening poverty and unemployment,’’ added Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General.

Freedom Front Plus hopes that Godongwana does not increase taxes, but rather reduce across board to give the economy a ‘much-needed injection’.

‘’Feasible solutions and proposals are also becoming more and more difficult to implement due to the country's dire fiscal position, the trap of government debt and a government that has proven over thirty years that it does not have the ability or the will to grow the economy,’’ said Wouter Wessels, FF Plus MP and chief spokesperson: Finance

‘’Ordinary South Africans must not be further burdened by this to the point of impoverishment. However, there do not seem to be many options. The money can only come from either a form of tax or borrowing. Both are equally dangerous and harmful,’’ he added.

The Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC), meanwhile, wants Godongwana to address the high unemployment rate and budget cuts in various sectors.

‘’The National Treasury states that it needs to implement broad budget cuts and other cost containment measures due to the high levels of public debt. Together we evaluated and debated the levels of public debt. In this assessment, it was agreed that, while we were concerned about the growth of debt interest payments, it was not a sufficient nor necessary condition to justify the budget cuts currently being implemented. Moreover, it is clear that austerity is self-defeating, as it is crippling the economy and thereby shrinking our GDP in relation to our debt to the benefit of lenders and loan sharks from the local mashonisa to the World Bank.’’

‘’There is consensus among us that there are a range of possibilities which the government has failed to explore before turning to the disaster of fiscal consolidation. We, therefore, call on the government to take these proposals into consideration so as to fulfil its constitutional obligations and pursue progressive economic policy. To the progressive forces in South Africa, we collectively state that “there is an alternative” to the status quo of stagnation, mass unemployment and unprecedented inequality,’’ added Dominic Brown, AIDC Spokesperson.

COSATU’s Malvern De Bruyn says the trade union alongside the SACP will picket on Hanover Street, Cape Town on Wednesday afternoon regarding budget cuts. It is also against the privatisation of State-Owned Entities such as PRASA and Post Office.

The Western Cape Child’s Commissioner, Christina Nomdo, wants the Finance Minister to prioritise children in his budget speech. The Commission held talks with Child Government Monitors who analyse the public budget from child rights perspective. In those talks, the CGMs called on Godongwana to shield them from the social sector spending cuts.

‘’A child-centred budget not only benefits children but also has positive implications for society as a whole.’’

The budget speech set to get underway at 2p.m on Wednesday

 

Done By: Mitchum George