TATTERED BUDGET
HILARY JOFFE: Fees spree sure to dump SA on junk heap
The events of the past week suggest it may be too late for fiscal consolidation
Tucked away in the back of October’s medium-term budget policy review, in the risk section of the document, are a few lines on policy proposals that are "currently not funded". Most pressing of these, the document politely says, is higher education, where the government is considering options to increase affordability for students — options that could cost between R17.7bn and R40.7bn in 2018-19. Turns out it’s the R40.7bn President Jacob Zuma is trying to force through, hijacking the budget process to deliver a fee-free plan devised on the advice of a family friend who turns out to have been a spy — and against the advice of the Heher commission on higher education as well as the Davis tax committee. It’s a number almost as large as the entire R52bn annual budget for the Department of Higher Education — and large enough that if the Treasury were to cut spending and/or hike taxes by that amount, the government could get back on the path of fiscal consolidation it so spectacularly fel...
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