Lerato Mbhiza
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana was speaking to economists in Cape Town on Thursday morning, a day after delivering the final budget of this political term and he said South Africa’s near-term growth remained hamstrung by lower commodity prices and structural constraints.
He revised the GDP growth forecast to 0.6% from the 0.8% predicted during the 2023 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS).
Godongwana said this was his modest way of telling South Africans that the economy has been almost stagnant for 10 years.
“We didn’t tell you that on average, for a decade, the economy has been almost stagnant, growing at about 0.8% with a population during the same period at about 1.4 million.
“What does that tell you? Per capita, we are becoming poorer and poorer; we didn’t want to tell you everything about ourselves,” Godongwana told the business sector.
The Minister said the situation had been
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