ANDILE KHUMALO: A mini-budget with one eye on the wolf, one on the party
“Unfortunately for the finance minister, his state-owned enterprises haven't covered him in glory in the past few months”
The medium-term budget policy statement is upon us on Wednesday, and Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba finds himself having to pull some rabbits out of his hat to keep the wolves at bay. Yes, it has come to that, unfortunately. We no longer have the luxury of looking forward to a mini-budget speech with predictions of how a minister may tweak here and there to make our economy grow faster, bring more relief to the poor, deliver better services and create an enabling environment for business to thrive. Those days are gone. Nowadays, we debate how the minister is going to keep bankers happy so that they don't call on their dollar billions of facilities in our state-owned entities; how to satisfy ratings agencies so they don't move from "junking" our foreign-currency debt and render our local-currency debt sub-investment grade; or how we are going to make ends meet when tax revenues come out much lower than we hoped. Unfortunately for the minister, his state-owned enterprises haven't cove...
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