The public sector wage bill is not the key factor behind the country’s fiscal crisis, a former head of the National Treasury budget office, Michael Sachs, says.

Fiscal consolidation would lead to further withdrawal of core services, rather than an improvement in efficiency, Sachs said on Wednesday while presenting a paper on the public service and the budget at a webinar. There was very little evidence that the government’s employment structure was deficient, “a widely held view in public discourse”...

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