Publications
Partners
I have a great respect for Minister Nene, as a politician and economist and to me it was not a surprise that he was appointed as Minister of Finance he has the qualifications and experience. I always saw him more academic than a politician.
I understand that the economic growth is very slow compared to other countries, there are so many reasons, that caused South African growth to be lower than what it was expected. One of them as the minister has mentioned on his speech being shortage of energy. He also said the debt of the country is increasing, which also have an impact into the low economic growth.
The government is planning an series of activities to make sure that there is enough energy generated so that the country could be able to meet its goal so all those activities will require funding while at the same time we have to manage the countries debt.
Personal income tax rates will be raised by one percentage point for all taxpayers earning more than R181 900 a year. That’s what make me mad. Where this money is going to ESKOM? Or to build another INKANDLA? Or town in NKANDLA? As was original planned by Pres. Zuma. Anyway enough about Zuma.
Even if they could give ESKOM 1000`s of billions of Rands the fact is the company is poorly managed. What I mean is before any company could increase its supply the first thing that they have to look at is their capacity. ANC government have assisted many South Africans who did not have access to electricity including me. Thumbs up for that but before that could happen ESKOM had to assess if they have enough capacity to do so. If they don`t have it then they should while at the same time increasing the supply also increase the capacity. This does not need any management skill or business skill, it only need common sense. Example a girl who sells sweets at school if she wants to sell them also after school ours have to buy more sweets so that she could be able to meet the demand both in school and after hours. Ok that has happened.
Billions of Rands were allocated to ESKOM to build more plants including the famous Medupi Power Station which is still not working. Even now the state is busy injecting money to this failed company for what? Answer- to fail again.
I am not sure how many times should I tell these people before any problem could be solved it need to be clearly identified. The problem is not money but management of that company. If the state really needs money to pay the debt and increase the capacity of energy and not to enrich themselves and ESKOM management , they should consider privatization of ESKOM, the proceeds will then be used to pay some international debts and be invested where there will be a good return to cover interest on the debt.
But anyway the Finance committee decided to make us pay more tax. We are living in a country where there re is high unemployment, this on its own means the standard of living is going down. This means that those who are working have to take care of unemployed. This means those who have high salaries are not actually earning high salaries since they have to share them with unemployed.
This raises tax by R21 a month for a taxpayer below age 65 with an annual income of R200 000. That R21 a month is the one that I use to give to my uncle`s child to have something to eat at school at least once in a month now you are taking it away from child. Who will benefit ESKOM and contracting companies that were never seen having a job well done?
My question is why ordinary citizen would suffer because of government and its organization failures? You tried to justify this by saying inflation has dropped, yes I agree in theory but practical it increased agree. But anyway what could you expect from a person who do not know how much is 500ml of cooking oil. To tell the truth is worth more than you think it is. The factory prices might have dropped but the prices to the end user have increased. That is the actual inflation rate is way more that 12%.
You had so many option but chose wrong one and if this is going to continue then the wellbeing of this country is going down. And anyway who wants to go to work if that will not improve your wellbeing. We will quite our jobs. Production would still go down and economic growth would go back again to zero percent.
Think about us before you implement your policies and do a research next time. With increase in tax you were unfair, not justified too ambitious.
