LETTER: Pravin Gordhan, architect of financial ruin, must go
In his first five years as finance minister Gordhan reversed all the good work his predecessor did to lower the debt-to-GDP ratio
The Editor’s Notebook (“From hardly any debt to financial aid (https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2020-08-02-lukanyo-mnyanda-from-hardly-any-debt-to-financial-aid/)”, August 3) refers. SA entered the 2000s with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 43%, which was reduced to 27% by 2008 under the steady and trusted hands of finance minister Trevor Manuel and president Thabo Mbeki.
On May 10 2009 Jacob Zuma appointed Pravin Gordhan as finance minister, and during his first five years in that position the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 27% to 47%, undoing all the hard work of his predecessor. That was the original sin...
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