FINANCE Minister Enoch Godongwana faces the challenge of presenting a clear strategy to revive South Africa’s torpid economy and return public finances to a sustainable path when he presents his first mid-term budget on Thursday.
Key metrics in the spending plan for the next three years will benefit from windfall mining revenue and upward revisions to gross domestic product, with the budget deficit likely to narrow faster than previously expected.
Still, the country is contending with surging debt and loan-servicing costs as the havoc wrought by the coronavirus pandemic compounds a deterioration in state finances caused by overspending, mismanagement and corruption.
Debt levels are expected to continue rising, peaking at 79.2% of GDP in the 2027 fiscal year, according to the median of seven economists’ estimates in a Bloomberg survey. While that’s better than the National Treasury’s February projection that it would stabilise at 88.9% of GDP in 2026, the
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