Gigaba stalling on tough decisions until the ANC elective conference

In today's medium-term budget speech, National Treasury announced a revenue shortfall of R50 billion. Tertia Jacobs says that while the market was expecting a revenue shortfall of between R30-60 billion and a budget deficit increase, it was also looking to the Finance Minister to announce measures that would offset these figures - like tax increases or expenditure cuts.

However Gigaba didn't address any of these issues, a move that Tertia believes is due to the fact that the "new Minister of Finance has not been in a position to make any tough decisions" until the outcome of the ANC elective conference in December is announced.

"This budget has not taken any steps to improve business confidence. In fact the trade-off between growth and an increase in debt has become all the more stark."

In the policy statement, the bailout of SAA has been factored into expenditure, explains Tertia. "What they indicated to us earlier in the year was that any bailout to SAA would be neutral for the budget deficit. So they would sell another asset to pay for SAA, for example, Telkom."

But as Gigaba didn't detail which assets will be sold, the SAA bailout "will be financed by tax collections, contributing to the wider budget deficit".

“The MTBPS suggests that there are no clear growth strategies. That is a consequence of the uncertainty about the outcome of the elective conference," says Tertia.

Gigaba gave no clear guidance in his speech about how additional revenues could be raised or how state-owned enterprises like SAA, the Post Office and SABC, will be financed.

"Essentially what this budget is telling us is that everything is on hold until a new ANC president is elected."