'The budget talks could stabilise GNU

Godongwana promises fiscal prudence in his new budget but the growth forecast may change

- Emsie Ferreira

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has called for a shift to consultative budget-making in coming months after bluntly describing the political crisis that forced him to prepare a third version of this year's budget as a mess.

"Were any lessons learnt? The first one is that we are in a coalition government. We need to do things differently," Godongwana told a media briefing which he said would be his last before he tabled the budget yet again on 21 May.

"We are dealing with uncharted terrain. As you are aware, we used to have a budget with a dominant party, being the ANC, and if one was preparing the budget, you could be sure that you would go to parliament and the ANC would pass the budget."

He conceded that he had not foreseen the difficulty that he would face in securing the support of all 10 parties in the coalition, eventually leading him to revoke a 0.5 percentage point VAT increase a week before it was due to take effect.

"I am not going to put blame on anybody, but that process on its own, because all of us are new in this thing, was messy."

Consultation with coalition partners should start in September, a month before the treasury chief tables the medium-term budget policy statement, and five months before the national budget in February.

"We have agreed that we have to now find a new process of consultation which must start latest September, so that, by the time we table the medium-term budget policy statement, there is broadly an agreed approach to the budget over the medium term."

The minister stressed he was speaking for the treasury, not the ANC, but believed the budget should be a consolidating force for a broad coalition.

"So, we will be developing a process of consultation in this regard, particularly in the GNU [government of national unity]," he said.