EDITORIAL: A recipe for budget chaos
‘While the role of the finance minister has always been to remind his colleagues of the need to make trade-offs over scarce resources, this time around the process has prioritised everything and nothing’
The ANC bi-annual lekgotla is an important event on the political calendar. It precedes the cabinet lekgotla, which in turn precedes the budget-planning process. Priorities set by the ANC in June are intended to feed into both the medium-term budget policy statement and, more importantly, the February budget. The most important outcome of the lekgotla was not related to the budget at all. This was the request to the economic transformation committee "to co-ordinate an approach" between the Department of Mineral Resources and the mining industry that will look beyond the current impasse. The committee, headed by Enoch Godongwana, has for the past two decades been the voice of rationality and prudence in the ANC. The Chamber of Mines will find a more sympathetic ear here, and a negotiating line via the ANC could be helpful. A word of caution is necessary, however. Godongwana has long been involved in mediating on the edges of this dispute, so far with little effect on the behaviour of...
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