DUMA GQUBULE: SA has a GDP growth hurdle, not a debt problem
Austerity policies will raise debt from a level that is still low compared to the country’s peers
In 1996 the financial markets, bank economists and noisy neoliberal echo chamber in the commentariat bullied the government into believing that SA had a debt crisis. At the time, SA’s debt to GDP ratio was 49.5%. Foreign debt was 1.9% of GDP.
The idea that there was an apartheid debt crisis in 1996 is propaganda and fiction. But in June 1996 the government implemented the Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) macroeconomic policy, which included slash and burn fiscal policies and sky-high interest rates. It was a disaster. Unemployment almost doubled to 8-million people (a 40.6% unemployment rate) in March 2003 from 4.3-million (33%) in 1996...
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