DAVID MAYNIER: The big issues Mboweni can’t ignore in his budget address
The DA wants to know where he stands on radical economic transformation, and how he proposes to tackle sluggish growth and unmanageable debt
We are in deep economic trouble, with ordinary people battling to make ends meet as they experience an income squeeze on top of tax increases and petrol price hikes. And 9.6-million people do not have jobs, or have given up looking for work. What this means is that finance minister Tito Mboweni’s “mini-moon” is over and he faces a six-pack of challenges that will have to be dealt with in his maiden medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) on Wednesday. The minister has a reputation for having fairly orthodox views on the economy, but during his political exile he often took to social media posting controversial content, which included an apparent flirtation with radical economic transformation. We need to know whether these posts were indeed just a flirtation or were a conversion. We believe the minister should define himself by explaining his brush with radical economic transformation and clarifying his views on extending state ownership in the mining sector, establishing a stat...
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