25 February 2021 - In the wake of the budget speech, many South Africans will be relieved there was no announcement of a significant increase in taxes. Others will welcome the stated intention to reduce the deficit and the debt-to-GDP ratio. But whatever comfort may be drawn from it should not blind us to the scale of SA’s fiscal and economic challenges.
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Government deep down a hole, and frantically digging - IRR
25 February 2021 - The finance minister yesterday presented the government's budget for the years ahead. He knows, as do most South Africans, that the country desperately needs economic growth to solve its problems – ranging from poverty and unemployment to the finance minister's own burden of balancing the state's books, a challenging task amidst rising spending and declining revenue.
IRR warns of tax revolt in wake of budget speech
24 February 2021 - What the budget reveals is the extent to which the government is making South Africans pay through taxation for the consequences of corruption and expropriation policy.
24 February 2021 - This afternoon, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni will deliver a Budget that has taken on greater-than-usual significance. For the past few years, Mboweni has been calling for tough measures to be taken, but has failed to take these, owing to lack of wider political support within the African National Congress (ANC).
Tax hikes will be damaging – IRR
24 February 2021 - A prime issue in today’s budget will be the question of taxes, specifically whether the South African government will demand that taxpayers – individual or corporate – give up a larger share of their incomes.
23 February 2021 - The argument for sin taxes is frequently made. Arguments against sin taxes, however, are rarely discussed, and never feature in the National Treasury’s budget speeches.
23 February 2021 - All attention is on the budget this week, but the defining issue confronting SA is the question of property rights. Little is likely to be a more acute disincentive for the investment — domestic and foreign — we so desperately need than the degradation of property protections.
Beware EWC in a time of fiscal crisis - IRR
23 February 2021 - As South Africa nervously awaits tomorrow’s Budget Speech, the Institute of Race Relations warns that any hope of the country’s extricating itself from its fiscal malaise will depend largely on its policy choices.
22 February 2021 - Donald Trump famously declared that “for every new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations [must] be identified for elimination”.
18 February 2021 - There has been much ado about the government’s handling of the process to procure Covid-19 vaccines, and with good reason, given the delay in procuring enough vaccines timeously for most South Africans to be inoculated.
18 February 2021 - Despite the many pious platitudes in last week’s SONA (state-of-the-nation address), the only ‘reforms’ President Cyril Ramaphosa is busy implementing are the policy shifts needed to advance the national democratic revolution (NDR) to which both he and the SACP/ANC alliance have long been committed.
17 February 2021 - The announcement in parliament by home affairs minister Aaron Motsoaledi that the electoral system is to be reformed is to be welcomed.