Africa-Press – South-Africa. ActionSA and Build One SA (BOSA) have called on the government to intervene amid financial pressure on South Africans and to address how National Treasury will resolve Eskom’s debt crisis.
Ahead of Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana’s budget speech, ActionSA said it believed the ANC was responsible for the state of the country’s economy.
“[After] years of poor policy decisions, mismanagement, and corruption, from Eskom to the public sector wage bill and the universal basic income grant, South Africa is facing several tough obstacles with which it must grapple, and the solutions will be complex,” ActionSA’s Athol Trollip said.
He called for economic growth and solutions to assist citizens who are faced with increased unemployment and high fuel and food costs.
He also said the government needed to fix “fundamental impediments” to the country’s economy, such as failing utilities and a lack of competition, to “ignite economic growth”.
In addition, Godongwana should address Eskom’s debt, he said.
“[It] threatens to derail the entity’s unbundling and has been a bottleneck for investment in the country’s transmission network, thereby limiting independent power producers’ ability to contribute generation capacity to the electricity grid.”
BOSA national spokesperson Sbu Zondi offered five interventions to alleviate the financial burden on South Africans.
They included reducing fuel levies and electricity, a “black tax exemption”, and a halt in tax increases.
Zondi said the National Treasury could finance these efforts by selling government shares in private companies, downsizing the Cabinet to 10 “super ministries”, and removing travel and VIP protection costs.
He said “inefficiencies in the system” put additional pressure on middle- and upper-income households that had to invest in private energy supplies, education, and healthcare.
Zondi also discussed the harsh economic impact of the energy crisis and the increased cost of living.
“Every South African is feeling the pinch. Lower-income households face the proportionality challenge where they are forced to spend an average of 70% of income on food and transport… This is while more than half of South Africa lives below the upper poverty line,” he said.
“Minister Godongwana has a unique opportunity to use the national budget process to ease the burden on every South African. It is morally and ethically obligatory that he does,” he added.
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