Zibi slams budget priorities, calls for overhaul

Speaking at Thursday's post-budget National Council of Provinces Finance Cluster oversight committee meeting, Zibi said the recent political and legal focus on value-added tax overshadowed urgent issues like collapsing infrastructure and broken public healthcare.

"The point here is that budgets are meant to solve problems. The debate around budgets is supposed to be about the order of those priorities and whether these allocations are sufficient or should be spent in an efficient manner,” the RISE Mzansi leader said.

"We never got a chance to have that discussion. I hope now there will be an opportunity to do so. But South Africa has a problem – and that is the composition of expenditure."

According to Zibi, an overwhelming 90% of South Africa’s revenue is absorbed by three categories: salaries, social grants, and debt service costs.

"Over R820-billion goes to salaries, over R440-billion goes to social grants, over R424-billion goes to debt service costs at R1.2-billion per day. That makes up about 90% of the revenue we collect. Then we must pay for goods and services, and we never have enough for these.

"Schools without modern science and computer equipment; clinics with insufficient medication, needles and anaesthetics; and so on. And when we do pay for these goods and services, we pay too much because they are poorly conceived, poorly planned, poorly managed and often riddled with corruption – at all levels of government."

Zibi also called for a fundamental rethink of government structure and public spending management, questioning the continued reliance on consultants to do the work civil servants are hired to perform.

"Do we have the right number of civil servants doing the kind of work that needs to be done, or are we trying to fit a square into a circle because in 1998 we thought the government should look the way it does now?"

"No, I am not suggesting that we retrench people – I am asking, for instance, whether we do not spend hundreds of millions of rands on consultants because the people we have in place aren’t fit for purpose.

"How should we deliver the social wage? Do we want to give people R370 to last them 48 hours, or do we want to use the R35 billion for carefully planned and executed initiatives to grow the economy and create jobs that pay a living wage? These are policy questions that cannot be answered in a speech by the finance minister alone."

Zibi further criticised the chaotic process surrounding the previous budget cycle, which was derailed by litigation over VAT increases. He acknowledged the challenges, but said he was confident the new budget would pass without drama.

"So, it will pass. We will not have this scenario where the budget doesn’t pass."

Appropriations Committee chairperson Mmusi Maimane, who leads Build One South Africa (BOSA), echoed his optimism.

"It will pass. I can give that assurance. I think there’s political will to make sure it passes. I don’t think there’s a single party that wants to see the drama of the last number of months."

Meanwhile, Finance Portfolio Committee Chair Joe Maswanganyi weighed in on the recent public backlash to fuel levy hikes, stating that populist resistance to taxation could endanger the state.

 "You are not going to run a state based on populism because there's no state that can function without revenue. It is very important that we understand that taxation enables the government to fund essential public goods."

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