EDITORIAL: The government is blind to the benefits of an efficient mining network
Take a look at this week’s medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) through a mining lens and the numbers are quite startling. The message very clearly is how important the mining sector is for SA’s economy and its public finances — and how crucial it is that the government does what it takes to make it easier for the sector to operate now as well as in the future with new investment.
The Treasury estimates that tax receipts for the current 2022/2023 fiscal year will come in R83.5bn ahead of February’s budget estimates. Corporate income tax collections alone are R62.8bn of it. And a graphic tucked away in the budget documents shows just how much has come from “mining and quarrying” over these two years of the global commodities boom. The sector contributed almost R50bn in fiscal 2021/2022, moderating to around R45bn this year. That’s more than four times the level of the previous two years of bad times. As the budget shows, the sector does not contribute much in downcycles...
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