Johannesburg – Finance Minister Tito Mboweni is today delivering an emergency supplementary budget speech to the nation.
Mboweni indicated that he would table the emergency Budget hours before President Cyril Ramaphosa eased the country’s Covid-19 lockdown regulations to level 3, allowing for increased economic activity while putting measures in place to contain the pandemic.
The proposed Special Adjustment Budget would modify the February Budget to divert current baseline allocations from departments to enable spending on the Covid-19 response.
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The National Treasury said Mboweni would table the Budget to ratify the government’s plans for a R500 billion stimulus package.
The Treasury said the departments were required to identify programmes or activities that could be temporarily suspended without negatively impacting their longevity.
These would typically be programmes that have already been put on hold during the lockdown and spending activities that are not critical to core service delivery.
“A revised fiscal framework will also be presented to account for substantial revenue losses emanating from the economic shock of the pandemic, and subsequent lockdown,” the Treasury said.
“All other adjustments not included in this Special Adjustment Budget will be tabled in the October Adjustment Budget.”
Experts are already mulling on the worst-case scenario of a 16 percent economic contraction and a R285 billion revenue deficit.
Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt felt a "painful" budget was the sad reality.
Reacting to whether or not Mboweni was going to bail out ailing SAA, Roodt pointed out that South Africa was already running a huge budget deficit. “We literally have no money,” Roodt said.