No pain, no gain for SA economy
Some pain is unavoidable in stabilising the fiscus, but politically palatable options do exist that might just do enough to appease the ratings agencies and financial markets
29 August 2019 - 05:00
Despite SA’s fiscal crisis — and the fact that the country has very little to show for the loose fiscal policy run over the past decade — there is a lobby (mainly on the Left) that thinks the best way to resolve SA’s growth and fiscal challenges is to inject further fiscal stimulus into the economy.
This view has been well and truly punctured by a new academic study. It finds that if the government fails to take evasive action and SA’s growth rate, interest rates and the primary budget balance all remain at their recent averages, the debt ratio will hit 100% by the end of the next decade...
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