THICK END OF THE WEDGE
PETER BRUCE: A new Gigaba or just the same old act?
It helps to work with sceptics. I’m charitable by nature, happy to assume people mean what they say. So it was yesterday afternoon. After listening to Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba deliver his first medium-term budget policy statement, my colleagues and I walked down a floor to record this week’s episode of the BusinessDayTV show, Editing Allowed. I was comforted, as I always am, by the presence on the panel of Financial Mail deputy editor Sikonathi Mantshantsha. He takes no nonsense from anyone — me included. My view on Gigaba’s speech was that he had been brutally honest about the mess we are in. This was a new Gigaba. I vividly remember a dinner with him and the bosses of Standard Bank a few years ago at which he told us he didn’t have much time for the private sector. The government didn’t need it.Yesterday, after admitting to a string of disasters – a colossal R51bn shortfall in tax revenue (and this after a tax increase in 2016), a steep climb in the budget deficit to 4.3% of...
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