BusinessLive reports that finance minister Tito Mboweni has said the public sector wage bill has become a serious drain on the public purse, with R8 out of every R10 spend by government going to salaries of civil servants.  

He also warned that this could have serious repercussions on government's ability to provide basic and essential services such as health care, education and policing.  Mboweni made the remarks while delivering the annual Professor Kader Asmal memorial lecture in Cape Town on Saturday.  Mboweni said the ANC was well aware of the governance challenges being facing amid a gloomy economic outlook and added that, if the ANC-led government were "better organised", it would not be spending the bulk of its revenue on public sector salaries.  "Because if eight out of every ten rand goes to salaries in the public service, you are left with R2 for other services - to fix a hospital, a clinic,” Mboweni pointed out.  He hinted that that would be one of the issues he would address in his maiden Medium Term Budget Policy Statement, which he is due to deliver on Wednesday.

• Read this report in full at BusinessLive

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