Author: Nyasha Musviba

Fellow South Africans I have the honour to present the 2016 Budget of President Zuma’s second administration. We do so in a spirit of frankness, both about our challenges and the opportunity to turn our economy’s direction towards hope, confidence and a better future for all. Low growth, high unemployment, extreme inequality and hurtful fractures in our society – these are unacceptable to all of us. I have a simple message. We are strong enough, resilient enough and creative enough to manage and overcome our economic challenges……….. Full Speech (download below) 2016 Budget Speech 2016 Budget Tax Rates guide Errata to Budget Documents 2016

Author: Jaco Leuvennink (News24). Cape Town – When the government is looking for extra money, all signs point to personal income tax (PIT) because increasing VAT and Company Tax have political and investment implications that’s currently difficult to counter, says a tax expert that spent 14 years of his career developing tax legislation, especially closing loopholes, at the National Treasury. Professor Keith Engel, an American with South African citizenship and currently chief executive of the South African Institute of Tax Practitioners (SAIT), said in an interview on a radio station (FM Classic) that higher income earners will be targeted. “Because the super rich is usually more tolerant…  (and) able to withstand tax hikes, the middle income earners may suffer the most. In an election year and with the rating agencies on our back, alternatives look highly unlikely.”

Author: Liesl Peyper (News24). Cape Town – This afternoon Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan will arguably give the most significant speech of his political career when he delivers the 2016/17 budget in Parliament. Economically speaking, the odds are against South Africa with record low growth rates, the worst drought in history, and an unsustainable debt to GDP ratio, to name but a few.

Author: Daniel Silke. Cape Town – To say that this is South Africa’s most important budget since 1994 is an understatement. The reality of a declining economy deeply entrenched in a seemingly endemic inability to break out of downfall mode has left both domestic and foreign investors despondent, demoralised and downright depressed. Frankly, to expect the proverbial rabbit to be pulled out of the hat to prevent the dreaded ratings agency downgrade seems unlikely. It may just be too late. And for once, economists and their related species, political analysts, should take some credit for the many warnings issued over as many years. If you fail to address policy paralysis – and also fail to encourage a diversification of your economy to the demands of the future – you will simply be left behind.

Author: Memory Mataranyika (News24). Harare – Analysts have projected a dim outlook for South Africa and its neighbours Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe as Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan readies for a belt-tightening Budget Speech for Africa’s second-largest economy. President Jacob Zuma last week emphasised the need to contain costs for the South African government and Gordhan will be hard pressed to deliver as he seeks to restore investor confidence and fix a struggling economy. Analysts at FocusEconomics said on Tuesday that “latest indicators point to another dismal expansion in the final quarter of 2015 and the outset of the new year. Manufacturing barely grew in December and the business confidence index recorded the second-lowest reading” in nearly a decade in January.

Author: Solly Moeng (News24). Cape Town – South Africans at home and in the diaspora, current and potential investors, the country’s trading partners and rating agencies all have their eyes glued on one man during this week: Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. In fact, they have one eye firmly on him and another darting uncomfortably between him and his boss, the increasingly unpredictable President Jacob Zuma, watching out for unexpected surprise moves from him.

Author: Hilary Joffe (BDlive). When the new democratic SA was granted its first sovereign credit ratings, Moody’s was the only one of the big three rating agencies to rank us as investment grade. So when the 1996 national budget was tabled, SA was still rated speculative, or junk, by Standard & Poor’s and Fitch. A decade later, then finance minister Trevor Manuel went into his 2006 budget just months after SA finally made it to the top of the triple-B investment-grade scale on all three of the rating agency ladders and was just one notch below the coveted A grade..