SOUTH African Finance Minister Tito Mboweni told an investment conference the Treasury won’t back down on its insistence that any wage agreement for state workers mustn’t breach the government’s fiscal ceiling.
Mboweni made the comments at a conference organized by JSE and sponsored by Citibank and Absa Group that’s closed to the media, a person attending the event told Bloomberg, asking not to be identified.
Mboweni angered powerful labour unions allied to the ruling African National Congress last year by reneging on a prior deal to raise wages for 1.3 million government workers.
In February, he announced a new three-year pay freeze in the public sector as part of plans to rein in government spending, reduce the budget deficit and stabilize debt.
Unions, which are demanding increases of inflation, which averaged 3.3% last year, plus four percentage points, have threatened to strike.
Mboweni also said he’s not in favour of
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