Mboweni budget speech

Photo: National Treasury / Twitter

Live stream: Watch Tito Mboweni’s mid-term budget speech here

Mboweni will deliver his third budget speech of 2020 to Parliament today, with spiralling debt and dire economic growth set to be addressed.

Mboweni budget speech

Photo: National Treasury / Twitter

All eyes will be on Finance Minster Tito Mboweni on Wednesday afternoon when he tables his mid-term budget review in parliament today at 14:00 SAST, with South Africa’s economy stuck between a proverbial rock and a hard place as and the need to reignite the economy through more spending remains urgent while debt continues to spiral.

After the COVID-19 pandemic’s desperate financial ramifications in 2020, the speech is set to provide a better picture of where the country is in terms of its economic recovery, and citizens will be intrigued to find out how their pockets will be affected by likely measures to give Treasury a boost after a year of under-reported tax collection. 

Watch LIVE: Mboweni delivers mid-term budget speech  

[Live stream will appear here around 14:00 SAST]

Economic Recovery Plan set to be outlined 

The Economic Recovery Plan outlined by President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier in October will be a focus area during the budget speech. Mboweni will have been crafting a budget around the plan to increase spending that involve the reshuffling of funds from various departments in order to facilitate an ambitious strategy that has a plethora of high-investment infrastructure upgrade projects as its key pillars. 

Consumers will be anxious about proposed increases to tobacco and fuel levies that are   likely to be targeted on Wednesday – as well as ‘new taxation methods’, such as a wealth tax, that are are also being plotted, and Mboweni will have to provide growth forecasts that are set to reveal the true horror of COVID-19’s impact. 

With the economy likely to contract by just under 10% at the end of this year, Mboweni will need to find funding from every nook and cranny available to him, having said in June during his emergency coronavirus budget speech that the budget deficit is expected to reach 15.7% of the country’s GDP for the current financial year.

Sovereign credit downgrades and an already painfully slow economy growth rate that plagued the country before the virus, leading to a record high unemployment rate that peaked at 31%, are all factors that mean that Mboweni has a mountainous task on his hands.