Africa-Press – South-Africa. It took three drafts, two tablings, a court challenge and some last-minute bladder pressure. Still, parliament’s standing and select committees on finance approved their report on finance minister Enoch Godongwana’s 2025 budget.
MPs from the committees met in a joint sitting on Wednesday to consider and approve the report, which noted Godongwana’s proposal to raise the general fuel levy for petrol and diesel to R4.01 a litre and R3.85 a litre respectively.
This comes after the Western Cape High Court dismissed the urgency of a legal challenge to the proposed fuel levy hike by the EFF. The department of petroleum and mineral resources also announced that the fuel price would drop in June by 19c, and diesel by 50c a litre.
Put to the vote, six MPs, including standing committee on finance chair Joe Maswanganyi, voted to adopt the report. Three MPs voted against: EFF MP Omphile Maotwe, MK Party MP Brian Molefe and MK Party MP Des van Rooyen.
Maotwe fought until the very end of the draft report’s reading and consideration to stress that her party rejected the fuel levy hike proposal. Van Rooyen concurred with Maotwe, saying the increase went beyond R4.1bn as a regressive tax proposal that will make millions of South Africans poorer.
“If you look at what is going to be affected by the fuel levy increase, it’s fuel and transportation, and the poorest people will feel it the hardest because they consume these at high levels.”
Molefe said the prospective revenue from the hike was not enough to justify subjecting poor South Africans to what he called a disproportionate cost burden.
“We need to at least capture those sentiments about the fuel levy, and for those reasons we do not support it. But more importantly, this budget is R2-trillion. Why do you take R1.4-trillion to harden the budget of the poor with a burden of R4bn, which is absolutely unnecessary?”
The first 2025 budget was drafted in February but was never tabled due to resistance to Godongwana’s proposal to raise VAT. The second version of the budget, tabled in March, reduced the VAT hike, but the adoption of that budget was challenged in court, and the hike was scrapped.
In a humorous moment, before the adoption of the report went to a vote, ActionSA MP Alan Beasley raised his hand to request a comfort break so he could use the bathroom. As inevitable as the outcome may have seemed, the moment was a welcome moment of relief from the tension.
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