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He was speaking on Thursday at a Budget breakfast organised by the Greater Johannesburg Chamber of Business.

"Ratings agencies are looking deeper than they did before," Schussler added, due to their mistakes made during the financial crisis.

"Many South African state owned enterprises (SOEs) are borrowing money - much of it guaranteed by government - and these SOEs are not doing the things they should be doing with the money, so yes, in about three years' time our ratings will slip."

Schussler said that SA's debt to GDP ratio was rising - "and it'll rise again and go over 40%."

Government debt guarantees had stood at 60 billion rand three years ago and were now at 150 billion rand - "and there's a lot more coming," Schussler added.

Fitch lowered its outlook on SA's BBB+ rating, the third-lowest investment-grade assessment, to negative from stable in January while Moody's cut its outlook in November.

"Finance Minister [Pravin] Gordhan might think that the details in the Budget speech will halt a credit-rating downgrade but look at it this way: every year we have good budgets but we don't stick to them," Schussler added.

Turning to the global economy, he said that low interest rates had "kept the world going".

"The world is going forward at a slow pace - and profits aren't going to be there quite as much as people think. So the world has reacted by throwing everything but the kitchen sink at this problem by using interest rates."

These rates, he added, were unlikely to rise anytime soon, "perhaps not even in 2014".

Schussler said that money in the bank in the US or Europe was losing value because inflation rates were higher than interest rates.

"This normally drives commodity prices but right now commodity prices are under pressure because there are concerns about growth in countries like China.

He added that around 70% of SA's exports were commodities.

"We're starting to feel this and perhaps this is why Minister Gordhan was cautious on his growth forecast in the Budget Speech."

Gordhan told parliament when presenting the National Budget on Wednesday that the country's economy had averaged about 3% growth a year since 2009 and against the background of the slowdown in the global economy, real GDP growth was likely to fall to about 2.7% in 2012.

"I'm more negative on this when it comes to growth but this year the government is being more realistic than in previous years."

SA presently had a loose monetary policy "where consumers can borrow quite cheaply," Schussler said.

Saving money in a bank currently brings in interest of around 5.5%.

"But yesterday consumer price inflation came in at 6.3% so it doesn't make sense to keep your money in a bank - that then becomes a problem - you'll lose 0.8% a year in true value if you keep money in the bank, so you need to look for other alternatives. If you keep it under the mattress you'll lose even more."

Schussler pointed out that real interest rates at prime were at their lowest since mid-1988.

"It's a time for spenders, not savers."

While interest rates in SA might not stay lower for as long as those in developed countries, Schussler said that rates would stay low "certainly for another year or two".

He said SA was also fighting a battle against recession not helped by the fact that its largest trading partner was the troubled eurozone.

He bemoaned budget deficits of the last few years pointing out that SA's debt to GDP was brought down from 50% to 23% by former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel in 10 years, but in just four years, it had been taken from 23% to around 38%.

"When Cosatu says the budget is not a people's budget and when it says we need to spend more, we can say that we're already doing that."

One of SA's problems was compensation to public employees.

"This compensation was R75 billion in 1996 and in 2014 it's seen as R420 billion.

"If you go to the Statistics SA website, you'll see an average salary in the private sector is R11,000, in the total economy it's R13,000 but in the government sector it's close to R17,000.

"In other words government employees get paid 40% more than the private sector."

Schussler said that if government salaries were brought down, there would be money to spend "on such things as Eskom power stations".