The Mini Budget & SA’s Huge Fiscal Headache When Finance Minister Tito Mboweni delivered his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) last week, he did not have a lot of room to manoeuvre. He had to cut the budgets of a few ministries and push ahead with a public sector wage freeze. While these measures were […]
On Thursday 15 October, President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed a joint parliamentary sitting to outline his Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan, aimed at helping the economy recover from the ravages of the lockdown implemented to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The key points of the Plan include: a state infrastructure fund that will provide R100 […]
The African Free Trade Agreement and its Potential for Growth The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is an ambitious plan that will create the world’s largest free trade zone in terms of participating countries since the establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). AfCFTA came into being in 2019 when 22 African nations ratified […]
On June 24th the Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, delivered the supplementary, or emergency, COVID-19 budget, which was meant to show how government was going to address the dire fiscal situation. Some commentators felt that it was a little light on detail, while others argued that the budget in fact offered some kind of roadmap of […]
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni will deliver a special emergency budget on Wednesday 24 June, when he will table a new financial framework to respond to the coronavirus pandemic which has wreaked havoc on the local economy. The emergency budget is largely about the reallocation of R130 billion from various government departments, including R30 billion from […]
On 18th June, the Pretoria High Court handed down a judgment in terms of which access to the special COVID-19 Social Relief of Distress Grant (known informally as the R350 grant) was extended to asylum-seekers and to the holders of various Special Permits whose permit or visa was valid on 15th March, when the National […]
Alcohol, Cigarettes and the COVID-19 Lockdown “Beyond health consequences, the harmful use of alcohol brings significant social and economic losses to individuals and society at large”.[i] The narrative of the COVID-19 pandemic has been dominated by the controversy surrounding the ban on the sale of cigarettes and alcohol. The ban was sudden and took […]
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