CLAIRE BISSEKER: SA continues to avoid the tough policy decisions at its peril
The underlying fiscal problems have not gone away and the government’s chronic indecision only makes matters worse
22 November 2021 - 13:57
In the darkest depths of the pandemic in 2020, I warned that SA was unlikely to pull out of its fiscal death spiral. We had left it too late to fix the economy, and the pandemic had made everything immeasurably worse.
There were several reasons to believe SA was headed for a debt trap, I said. First, Covid-19 had caused the need for income support to explode at a time when SA’s fiscal position had never been weaker. The emergency Covid social relief of distress (SRD) grant risked becoming permanent. This would cost money the government did not have...
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