South Africa’s stronger public finances have given the county a sizable cushion to absorb external shocks — such as the fallout from the conflict in Iran, according to the head of the National Treasury.
“It would take a very large shock to derail our fiscal plans,” Treasury Director-General Duncan Pieterse told Bloomberg in an interview on Monday.
“We have geared ourselves in a way that we can manage some deviation.”
The Treasury projects a primary surplus – which measures revenue minus non-interest spending – of R131-billion in the fiscal year through March 2027.
That’s 60 billion rand more than this fiscal year’s surplus, which was 0.9% of gross domestic product and will stabilize South Africa’s debt-to-GDP level, before it starts to shrink from 2026-27.
For South Africa to be pushed off this path of fiscal consolidation, revenue would either have to fall by 60 billion rand or government spending jump by the same amount, Pieterse said.
The Iran
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