A WEE DRAM
CHRIS GILMOUR: Dawie Roodt peers down at SA from the fiscal cliff
Efficient Group chief economist cites the Eskom subvention, overpayment of public servants and an uncompetitive tax regime as red flags
The last time I covered one of the presentations of the insightful and brutally frank Dawie Roodt, who is chief economist of Efficient Group, I was admonished by my usually very chilled-out news editor. He told me to stick to my knitting — which is a weekly column on economics, finance, business and companies. I was reprimanded for wandering into the viper pit of SA politics. So this time around, I will be looking at Roodt’s thoughts on the latest budget (that is economics and finance, right?) and will certainly be sanitising any of his strongly worded opinions. Speaking at the Free Market Foundation, Roodt (an ichthyologist) compared an economy to the ecology of a fish tank: keep it in balance and don’t meddle with its natural dynamics, otherwise the fish will inevitably die. Roodt looked at the SA fish tank and its latest big feed, that is the recent budget, and found it very light in content. It was rather a case of treading water until the upcoming national elections. He also ob...
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