I’ve lost track of how many budget speeches I’ve covered in the lock-up in Pretoria.
Credit: INDEPENDENT MEDIA
Nicola Mawson, IOL Business Editor. Picture: Matthews Baloyi, Independent Media.I’ve lost track of how many budget speeches I’ve covered in the lock-up in Pretoria. All the Treasury staff there on the big day know my name, and apologise for - yet again - not getting me my coffee of choice.
It’s become a regular feature on my calendar, and one I look forward to every six months. It’s generally a great time to dig into the nation’s finances and swap chit-chat with some of the best financial journalists this country has to offer.
Last year, the budget was so packed for former minister Nhlanhla Nene, Treasury had to bring in extra desks. There must have been a good 30+ of us scribes in Pretoria lock-up. It was great fun. Cut off from the outside world completely with heads bent furiously over keyboards and scribbling in the mammoth pile of documents Treasury hands out.
This year, Pretoria wasn’t quite so full: I suspect many journalists had gone to Cape Town to be closer to the action.
After all, it was the most eagerly anticipated financial event of the year, and President Jacob Zuma had - during his toughest State of the Nation Address since taking office in 2009 - promised that much of the granular detail would be in the budget.
Zuma put the economy front and centre of his speech, and promised the government would rein in state-owned enterprises, and cut spending, and boost small and medium businesses and and and...
And he said the exact detail would be in Gordhan’s speech.
Now, don’t get me wrong, listening to the speech after lock-up, it sounded good. Gordhan said all the right things and made all the right noises.
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Except, when you have hours to go over the speech and hundreds of pages of documents, you’re not listening to a master orator, you’re digging through words for meaning.
And, this year, asking yourself: “What have I missed? I’ve missed something... this speech is lacking.”
Questions, not answers
Thinking I may have suddenly lost the plot, or am too exhausted from clambering out of bed well before the birds, I bounce my concerns off a colleague. Nope, I’ve got it right. There is no detail, no substance, no real money.
No wonder analysts are divided as to whether the speech went far enough and sounded the right messages.
For example, the government will save money through cutting the wage bill by freezing non-essential posts.
How much money? How many posts? Over how long? In which departments? Which jobs? Why do we even have non-essential posts in the first place?
That detail is not in the speech. In fact, if you want to even get close to the numbers, never mind anything else, you have to trawl through the National Estimates of Expenditure book, which has hundreds and hundreds of pages, and add up the saving each department refers to.
Let’s take the cap on allowances for cars for government officials. What’s the new cap? What was the old cap? Does this mean they all have to buy Polos instead of Mercs?
Who knows.
Personal taxes are another thing. Gordhan was roundly praised for not raising the tax rate and for giving some relief to those at the lower end and middle of the bracket. Have a close look at Chapter 4 of the Budget Review. The rate hasn’t gone up, but the base amount has - for the first three brackets. That’s exactly the group Gordhan said was getting relief.
The top two brackets, in fact, pay less. And then, how much is this relief worth exactly if one strips out inflation?
Who knows. It would take an actuarial scientist with a larny calculator quite some time to wade through all these numbers and get to a clear picture of what’s going on.
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I spent more time digging for a decent story than I did writing this year; and I wasn’t alone. Usually there’s a queue to send back copy when we get the go-ahead. Not this year.
Chatting to some of the other journos afterwards, we all had a sense there was something missing.
Sure, Gordhan came in at the last minute and much work was done by Nene. Sure, he said all the right things about cutting down on spending.
Where have I heard that before? Oh yes, last year, and the year before, and the year before that.
We need granular details. We need to know exactly how this country will chart its future, we need to know where savings will come from, and we all need to know exactly how we will play our part.
Apart, that is, from paying more for tyres, booze, cigarettes, plastic bags and incandescent light bulbs.
I can only hope that Gordhan will soon provide more detail.
Help us play our part, SA Inc. We all want to.
* Nicola Mawson is the online editor of Business Report. Follow her on Twitter @NicolaMawson or Business Report @busrep.
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