With Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s annual budget speech only two days away, South Africans remain anxious about the outcome- and the Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE) is no different.
Having launched a new report on South Africa’s jobs crisis, executive director of the CDE, Ann Bernstein, said that South Africa’s unemployment crisis had worsened, with only 42% of adult South Africans employed, down from 46% in 2008.
According to Bernstein, “the country’s unemployment rate is at its highest in years, and it is estimated that around 18 million people are beneficiaries of the state”.
Bernard Sacks, a tax partner at Mazars, said that “Minister Mboweni’s priority this year will likely be to find more ways of cutting expenditure and squeezing more out of the taxpayer base”.
Mboweni will deliver the budget speech in the National Assembly Chamber on Wednesday, 26 February. – Zoë van Rooyen