Zuma orders dramatic 2018 budget rethink
The measures that follow Friday’s S&P downgrade include R30bn in tax hikes
The government is looking to implement R30bn in tax hikes and more than R50bn of spending cuts in 2018 as it struggles to stabilise the ballooning public-debt ratio and respond to the concerns of ratings agencies and investors. The Presidency said on Monday that President Jacob Zuma had directed Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba and the presidential fiscal committee to find R15bn of revenue measures and R25bn of expenditure cuts to address the roughly R40bn gap which the medium-term budget policy statement said was needed to stabilise public debt at a level below 60% of GDP. The Treasury confirmed that these amounts were over and above the R15bn in tax measures and R31bn in spending cuts for the 2018-19 fiscal year already included in former finance minister Pravin Gordhan’s budget in February.The commitment to the new measures, details of which will be revealed in the February 2018 budget, comes after S&P Global Ratings downgraded SA’s ratings on Friday and Moody’s put SA on review fo...
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