Medium-term budget: The iceberg has emerged
The Treasury’s policy of practising fiscal consolidation while praying for growth is running out of road. There are political limits to how much it can keep tightening — as the GNU is about to find out
24 October 2024 - 05:00
Over the past decade, South Africa has been caught in a low-growth, high-interest-rate trap. This has caused debt service costs to explode and forced the National Treasury to reduce spending growth to its lowest level yet.
It has inflicted a cash crunch on most of the government, but nowhere are the consequences more apparent than in the labour-intensive departments of health and education. ..
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