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The Democratic Alliance and Cosatu agree on one thing: the medium-term budget can’t be “business as usual”.
Both organisations issued emailed press statements with this request in the subject title to Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene.
Nene is presenting the medium-term budget to Parliament at 2pm today.
Both the DA and Cosatu agreed that Nene should provide hope to the unemployed.
DA spokesperson on finance David Maynier was very concerned about the state’s debt.
“Debt service costs are the fastest growing expenditure item on the budget: we will spend R420 billion on servicing debt between 2015-2016 and 2017-2018 which is, staggeringly, nearly double the education budget for 2015-2016.
“What we need is a medium-term budget policy statement that is ambitious and aimed not just at balancing the books, but also at lifting the economy out of the low-growth, high-unemployment spiral.”
Matthew Parks, Cosatu’s Parliament official, said South Africa was not making sufficient progress in the struggle to ensure good jobs for all.
“We have not been able to significantly reduce our 34% unemployment rate and our infamous status as the most unequal society. Too many South Africans remain condemned to a life of poverty. The government must develop an urgent plan on how to turn the economy around and ensure the rapid creation of permanent decent work for all.”
Cosatu urged the government to move away from its “conservative fiscal and monetary approach”.
“The economy is still too fragile and bleeding jobs. It needs the government driven infrastructure expenditure to push and kickstart it and to ensure the creation of badly needed decent permanent jobs for all. Now is not the time to reduce badly needed state driven infrastructure building and expenditure.”
Cosatu asked that the youth wage subsidy be removed and denied that public sector salaries were responsible for the fiscal constraints.
