'No practical solutions' - Opposition parties slam Godongwana's budget
Opposition parties have expressed their disappointment in Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana's 2023 budget, saying it was a missed opportunity to provide practical solutions for South Africans.
Godongwana tabled his 2023 budget vote in the Cape Town City Hall on Wednesday, where he announced that Eskom, SAA, and SAPO will be receiving financial assistance from the government.
The budget comes at a time when the country is battling its worst power cuts yet, due to the struggling utility's failure to generate enough capacity.
The EFF, DA and FF Plus believe the budget lacked believable solutions.
"The budget did not present any practical, implementable, and believable solutions to the current structural challenges facing South Africa, because it continued to depend on defunct neoliberal ideas that have long been abandoned, even by their champions in Washington,” says the EFF in a statement.
“The country is currently going through an unimaginable crisis and is on the brink of collapse because of electricity blackouts and the destruction of Eskom. The Minister of Finance's proposed interventions at Eskom are not intended to stabilise Eskom's grid or new generation capacity,” they add.
“The interventions that seek to give Eskom a relief of R254 billion over the next three years and focus on transmission and distribution are a demonstration that Ramaphosa is hellbent on the complete destruction of Eskom’s generation capacity."
The DA's Dion George says there was nothing bold about Godongwana's budget.
"The Minister has failed to announce any meaningful structural reforms that could drive economic growth, incentivize domestic savings, attract foreign capital, and protect vulnerable South Africans,” says George.
“This budget completely ignores the country's mounting debt problem, and in fact adds to it. It offers no solution to revitalize state-owned enterprises or address the energy crisis. The Minister has missed an opportunity to bolster domestic savings by increasing the tax-free savings limits, amongst others."
The FF Plus's Wouter Wessels says Godongwana missed an opportunity to stimulate economic growth.
"This squandering of funds on the SAA, the Post Office and other public enterprises must be viewed against the backdrop of the country's highest unemployment rate in recent history, the government’s wage bill and debt growing at an alarming pace, and the public and business sector fighting a losing battle against the power crisis,” he says.
“The money should rather have been spent on more important priorities, like greater incentives to the public for converting to solar power, but after nearly three decades of ANC rule these priorities have become totally skewed."
ALSO READ
