The parliamentary budget office, an independent body set up to analyse fiscal policies, has lambasted the National Treasury’s reasoning for hiking VAT, saying it is oblivious to the country’s growing inequality.

The Treasury ignited fierce debate last month with a proposal to increase the VAT rate, raising it by 0.5 percentage points annually for the next two fiscal years to reach 16% by 2026-27, defending the hike as comparing favourably to that of peer countries...

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