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IN HIS 2014 budget speech, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan had some striking plans to protect the financial well-being of households in South Africa.
Among the best are those to help indebted consumers cut their debt weight while eradicating obnoxious and deceitful activities of irresponsible lenders and unfair debt collectors.
Another plan concerns the introduction of reforms to improve governance over pension and provident funds, aligning their rules and tax treatment.
These and a few other proposals would sum up a small but important move in the opposite direction from where this country has been going in the past couple of years, i e rampant exploitation by microlenders of poor people and a not-so-clear and uneven tax regime for provident and pension funds.
But those concerned with the immediate future of South Africans could be upset by some parts of the budget speech.
Most of us have to work to make a living. Yet about 24% of the country's fit and healthy workers are either not working or have given up searching for employment. Many are also unwillingly working part-time.
The key motive for that is fairly easy: there is not much need for the goods and services that would employ great numbers of people. In addition, government has not done much to fix the unemployment crisis.
However, on Wednesday Gordhan said the next stage of growth is about the agility of the private sector and the synergies created with government. Government, he said, will continue to provide an enabling environment for businesses to grow and create employment.
“Over the past five years, we supported businesses by relaxing exchange control regulations to support those who wanted to invest in the African continent. We provided tax incentives for manufacturing businesses to expand operations, improve competitiveness and acquire new machinery.
"We also opened up opportunities for the private sector to build and run our renewable energy plants and introduced the employment tax incentive. The result was an increase in job creation. Now, this effort has to be scaled up to make a bigger impact on growth, jobs and development,” Gordhan said.
But the sad thing about Gordhan’s positive statement is that government seems to be the only one that sees all these initiatives working.
People on the streets do not see any benefits. Instead, townships continue to be filled with those who are unemployed or have been retrenched.
It is no wonder service delivery protests get so much volatile and such widespread support. Too many people in the townships are sitting pretty with nothing to keep them occupied.
Additionally, Gordhan says government has stepped up the implementation of the expanded public works programme and implementation of the Community Work Programme in every municipality by 2017.
We have heard so much about this in all these years, and yet nothing drastic has happened to change peoples’ lives.
As much as Gordhan seems to have good intentions, he must do all in his power to make sure that there is a seismic shift in matters like job creation.
Then we will know that they are doing a great job. At this stage, only the government seems to believe claims that it is doing well on the employment front.
- Fin24
*Mzwandile Jacks is an independent journalist. Opinions expressed are his own.
Among the best are those to help indebted consumers cut their debt weight while eradicating obnoxious and deceitful activities of irresponsible lenders and unfair debt collectors.
Another plan concerns the introduction of reforms to improve governance over pension and provident funds, aligning their rules and tax treatment.
These and a few other proposals would sum up a small but important move in the opposite direction from where this country has been going in the past couple of years, i e rampant exploitation by microlenders of poor people and a not-so-clear and uneven tax regime for provident and pension funds.
But those concerned with the immediate future of South Africans could be upset by some parts of the budget speech.
Most of us have to work to make a living. Yet about 24% of the country's fit and healthy workers are either not working or have given up searching for employment. Many are also unwillingly working part-time.
The key motive for that is fairly easy: there is not much need for the goods and services that would employ great numbers of people. In addition, government has not done much to fix the unemployment crisis.
However, on Wednesday Gordhan said the next stage of growth is about the agility of the private sector and the synergies created with government. Government, he said, will continue to provide an enabling environment for businesses to grow and create employment.
“Over the past five years, we supported businesses by relaxing exchange control regulations to support those who wanted to invest in the African continent. We provided tax incentives for manufacturing businesses to expand operations, improve competitiveness and acquire new machinery.
"We also opened up opportunities for the private sector to build and run our renewable energy plants and introduced the employment tax incentive. The result was an increase in job creation. Now, this effort has to be scaled up to make a bigger impact on growth, jobs and development,” Gordhan said.
But the sad thing about Gordhan’s positive statement is that government seems to be the only one that sees all these initiatives working.
People on the streets do not see any benefits. Instead, townships continue to be filled with those who are unemployed or have been retrenched.
It is no wonder service delivery protests get so much volatile and such widespread support. Too many people in the townships are sitting pretty with nothing to keep them occupied.
Additionally, Gordhan says government has stepped up the implementation of the expanded public works programme and implementation of the Community Work Programme in every municipality by 2017.
We have heard so much about this in all these years, and yet nothing drastic has happened to change peoples’ lives.
As much as Gordhan seems to have good intentions, he must do all in his power to make sure that there is a seismic shift in matters like job creation.
Then we will know that they are doing a great job. At this stage, only the government seems to believe claims that it is doing well on the employment front.
- Fin24
*Mzwandile Jacks is an independent journalist. Opinions expressed are his own.
