Finance minister Tito Mboweni's budget speech in five telling quotes

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni delivered the 2019 budget speech in Parliament on Wednesday, as power utility Eskom struggles to keep the lights on. 

Here are five important quotes from Mboweni.

Eskom

“Pouring money directly into Eskom in its current form is like pouring water into a sieve. I want to make it clear: the national government is not taking on Eskom’s debt. Eskom took on the debt. It must ultimately repay it. We are setting aside R23bn to financially support Eskom during its reconfiguration.”

Other state-owned enterprises

“On other SOEs we are reviewing our framework for state-owned enterprise support. Government has revised the contingency reserve upwards to R13bn for 2019/20, to respond to possible requests for financial support.”

Listen to further analysis of the budget here:

Wage bill adjustments

“The public wage bill is unsustainable. We must shift expenditure to investment. National and provincial compensation budgets will be reduced by R27bn over the next three years. The first step is to allow older public servants, who want to do so, to retire early and gracefully. This will save an estimated R4.8bn in 2019/20, R7.1bn in 2020/21 and R8bn in 2021/22.”

Job creation

“The Jobs Fund is a vital complement to private-sector job creation. The fund has disbursed R4.6bn in grant funding and created well over 200,000 jobs since inception.”

Schools’ infrastructure

“Over R30bn is allocated to building new schools and maintaining schooling infrastructure. An additional R2.8bn is added to the school infrastructure backlogs grants to replace pit latrines at over 2,400 schools.”