Speech by GOOD MP, Shaun August on our response to the Budget 2021:
Honourable Chairperson,
When the Covid disaster hit, intelligent people around the world said we mustn’t waste the crisis.
From the depths of our misery new opportunities would arise.
The challenge was recognising the opportunities and working out how to draw advantage from them.
In South Africa, the Covid crisis was layered on deeper systemic crises. Our economy was already on its knees.
The gap in living standards between rich and poor was already a gaping chasm.
Our basic education system and our municipalities were already failing to equip our children and families with the basic tools and environments to escape the cycles of poverty, gender exclusion, violence and under-development.
We knew we’d have to borrow more money.
The questions were, how much? And, how would we afford to pay it all back?
Then the pandemic struck.
Chairperson…
The pandemic has forced us to recalibrate our sights and objectives. We can’t prioritise creating new business, jobs and infrastructure if we don’t prioritise paying to vaccinate the nation, first.
With our vaccination programme now under way, we can start to look towards the economic u-turn – we can start to refocus on bringing stability to our fiscal framework.
Honourable Chairperson…
We don’t want to return to the economy of the past which excluded the majority of our people from meaningful opportunities. We want to use this opportunity to create something new.
In this context, GOOD welcomes the announcement of R792 billion to expand infrastructure as a key driver to job creation, stimulating the economy and addressing the infrastructure backlog.
GOOD also welcomes the extension of the Ters grant until end-April, but it is not enough. We must use this period to intensify our support for the most marginalised of our people. We cannot afford to avoid a Basic Income Grant any longer.
No person can live without an income. We therefore expect the Minister of Finance to be leading the urgent debate about timeframes and quantums for the introduction of a permanent B.I.G.
Chairperson…
Eskom’s troubles must be urgently addressed. Failing SOE’s like Eskom and SAA stop investment and economic certainty dead in their tracks.
But even as we perform miracles we cannot afford to de-focus from our priority to reduce debt.
Zero based budgeting is a good place to start.
GOOD calls on all governments departments, and all provincial and local governments to commence with zero-based budgeting processes in the next financial year to identify waste and fund priorities.
I thank you.