12 March 1997
The SACP generally welcomes the budget, specifically the targeted tax relief for lower income earners, and the significant increase in the housing budget. Also to be welcomed are increases in public works, social welfare and pensions, justice and police.
This is a budget which seeks to implement some redistribution, which is so key to the overall success of the RDP.
We also welcome the fact that the budget makes no provision for privatisation "windfalls". We cannot allow the restructuring of state assets to be driven by budgetary expectations.
The focus of debate should now shift away from general budgetary figures towards effective management and effective and well directed expenditure of these public resources.
The high roll-over figure from last year is one area of concern, and, while it is clearly better to roll-over than waste, this high figure is surely an indication of ineffective marshalling within government of public resources.
Of even greater concern is the large amount of the budget that goes directly to provinces where often, we believe, there is much less effective financial management and purposeful expenditure. To a large degree we are encumbered with a federal-style budget, a reality which we can ill afford.
We do not believe that the limitations of the present budget should be blamed upon the Minister of Finance, or upon government in general. They are limitations that are symptomatic of an economy that remains hostage to a considerable extent to powerful domestic and international private sector forces. This budget and the sectoral line budgets that will emerge from it need to be seen, therefore, not as annual balancing acts that have to tack passively within the constraints of the existing dispensation. Rather, the entire budgetary process must be seen and used actively as an instrument for ongoing transformation. We believe that the present budget creates some space for this.