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Moneyweb reports that there are now more people receiving social grants in SA than there are people with jobs.
Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba’s budget last week highlighted the predicament government finds itself in, namely that there are 17.6m people receiving grants, against the 16.2m people with jobs. The former have exploded more than four-fold in 17 years, while the number of official jobs has gone up just 30% over the same period. Aggravating the situation was the growth in public sector jobs from 2.1m to 2.7m since 2008. Public servants’ salaries – which are more than a third higher than the private sector average – now account for nearly half the annual budget. “This situation is not sustainable,” economist Dawie Roodt said at a post-budget briefing. Rather than trying to focus on job creation, Roodt said the government should be looking at economic growth as the primary engine of job creation, flanked by privatisation, massive infrastructure development and a world class skills development programme. Well-known economist Mike Schüssler pointed out that a worrying aspect of the structural dependence being created in the country was that of the roughly 16 million people with jobs, 10 million were in the formal sector and only 7.5 million of those paid tax. “This leaves the few who are working to carry the burden. This cannot continue.”
- Read this report by Ciaran Ryan in full at Moneyweb
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