By Kouthar Sambo
Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has tabled his Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement this afternoon at the City Hall in Cape Town today.
He attributed the weak medium-term outlook to power cuts, poor logistics sector performance, high inflation, rising borrowing costs, and a challenging global environment.
Speaking on VOC’s Drive Time show earlier today, Chartered accountant and Political commentator Khaya Sithole said the reality is that they have exhausted all revenues of extraction, except the tax collection gap.
“This simply means that the South African Revenue Services (SARS), if their system is perfect, could check every transaction and collect all the taxes due, and there would still be something coming in,” explained Sithole.
According to Sithole, once you exhaust that, which means SARS must be capacitated to get them, then the avenue for new taxes to come in is “remarkably low.”
He further added that allowing the economy to grow is of utmost importance. However, the possibility of such growth seems rather vague as Eskom and Transet continue to “sabotage the economy.”
“The minister mentioned that 5% of the GDP has been lost relating to one of those two entities underperforming. Until this is addressed and fixed, we are going to be sacrificing those revenues that we desperately need,” reiterated Sithole.
Photo: VOCfm
