Thalia Holmes
Wednesday’s budget lopped R50-billion off the public wage bill, and in doing so took a very clear step back from government’s previous efforts to increase public employment.
The strategy of upping the number of people employed by the public purse -used in the first part of the last decade to mitigate the effects of the worldwide economic recession – has been replaced by a renewed focus in infrastructure spending.
Public infrastructure expenditure increased from R49-billion in 1998/99 to R236-billion in 2017/18. In real terms, it grew by an annual average of 4.3%. Over the period, state-owned companies have spent R1.3-trillion on infrastructure. The budget also shows that municipalities and provincial departments have spent R612.8-billion and R705.2-billion respectively to build things such as schools, hospitals, clinics and other community-related infrastructure.
Over the last 20 years, public-sector infrastructure expenditure as a share of gross domestic product averaged just under 6%.
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