I was excited to read a piece in Business Day this week by former Treasury official Owen Willcox, who suggested the department, albeit unwittingly, had stunted growth in SA. “There is no fiscal problem in SA, even as debt-to-GDP creeps higher. There is a growth problem and it manifests in a fiscal problem. Until we diagnose the problem correctly, the solution will elude us,” he wrote.

Making up about 30% of the South African economy, the state is a sizeable beast in our lives, so the fact that it has been cutting its spending in recent years has had a significant impact...

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