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The context to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s maiden medium term budget policy statement is fraught. His party recently bloodied at the polls after more than a decade of corruption and incapable governance has left the country teetering on the brink. There is no sense of hyperbole here. PRASA has been looted down to the railway tracks, the energy crisis grinds on without a solution yet decided upon for Eskom’s balance sheet crisis, which all started with ANC’s funding arm chancellor house. To his credit, Godongwana did question the involvement of Chancellor House at the time when deputy minister of Public Enterprises.
Aging and poorly maintained water infrastructure is now starting to become the next binding constraint to growth.
Following the pandemic we now have the world’s highest unemployment.
The only two sectors that are really showing any signs of growth are still mired in policy uncertainty thanks to interminable debates about expropriation without compensation and the fact that minerals were in effect expropriated under the MPRDA, which has seen new exploration investment plunge off a cliff.

The time for pussyfooting is over. Let’s welcome our panel to preview this critical fiscal statement of intent: Annabel Bishop, Chief Economist at Investec Bank; Hugo Pienaar, Chief Economist at the Bureau of Economic Research & Lebogang Mulaisi, COSATU: Labour Market policy coordinator