11th March 1998
The Budget announced today by Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel, represents a generally constructive and well balanced approach to meeting the social delivery needs of our society, within the severe constraints of our national means.
The SACP, however, shares with its ally COSATU a concern that some of the constraints are self-imposed and excessively restrictive. We intend to pursue the ongoing debate within our alliance about the appropriateness of certain GEAR targets.
Today's budget also underlines the need to extend and improve upon government's capacity to collect adequate revenues. The impending Katz Commission Report must be the occasion to unlock a broad public debate on developing a much more effective and progressive taxation system. More progressive taxation measures must be considered, and so, too, must the development of government's capacity to enforce existing taxation measures. We believe that significant amounts of revenue are not coming in because large corporations have the technical ability to avoid payment of what is due.
On this score the SACP notes with concern the dominant paradigm, in virtually all the media (including the public broadcaster), that prevails in commentary around today's budget. Virtually all comment is grounded in the assumption that the average South African is little more than a tax-payer - we are asked to feel concern or relief at the budget from the narrow perspective of tax-paying. It is time that the media helped us all to assess the budget as citizens, with an interest in the well-being of our public health-care system, our public schooling system, and the overall transformation of our society.