MTBPS: Godongwana delivers treasury’s same old sermon

After a decade of worshipping at the shrine of fiscal consolidation and structural reforms with nothing to show, the treasury’s 2022 medium-term budget policy statement decided that the best way to get an answer to its prayers was to show more faith and pray harder. 

It doubled down on debt reduction and pinned all its hopes on structural reforms to unleash an improbable wave of new private sector investment in network industries — energy, transport, water, and telecommunications. 

The words fiscal consolidation — another name for austerity measures — and structural reforms first appeared in the treasury’s 2012 budget review publication. “As the economy recovers and fiscal consolidation proceeds, government borrowing will moderate, with debt projected to peak at 38.5% of GDP in 2014-15 … While growth is expected to pick up over the medium term, structural reforms are required to set the economy on a different trajectory that increases labour absorption, raises competitiveness and ensures that the benefits of growth are shared,” the publication read.