The possible quick budget wins

Friday, November 08, 2024 | 1130 Views |

Deep planning: Senior civil servants from various ministries met on Thursday to start the Budget Project Review for the 2025-26 financial year.
According to the Finance Ministry, the Budget Secretary, Boniface Mphetlhe advised the ministries to not consider asking for more money or lapsing on revenue collection PIC: FINANCE MINISTRY FACEBOOK

Whoever President Duma Boko appoints as his Finance Minister will have the urgent priority of first assessing the true state of public finances, then taking steps to steady the boat. There are quick wins available, but quick does not mean easy, writes MBONGENI MGUNI

The Finance Ministry’s website, the go-to source fiscal data, has been quiet this year. While traditionally, the release of data sets from the Ministry is a notoriously slow affair, this financial year, reports suggest that the challenges in the Government Accounting and Budgeting System, have made it difficult for the Ministry’s number crunchers to know the inflows and outflows required to update their reports.

What is known, however, is that the budget deficit forecast for 2024-25 will almost certainly spiral beyond the forecast P8.7 billion due to significantly lower than expected mineral revenues. As the diamond downturn persists, government has been borrowing more heavily from the capital market and also drawing down deeper into its savings housed in the Government Investment Account (GIA), while waiting for a recovery in the precious stones.

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