Reuters reports that President Cyril Ramaphosa indicated on Monday that “focused discussions” would be needed between the government and trade unions on ways to slow the rate at which public sector wages were growing.  

Ramaphosa used his weekly newsletter to the nation to back up Finance Minister Tito Mboweni, who proposed R160 billion of cuts to the public sector wage bill during his budget speech last week.  Mboweni’s budget drew an angry response from unions.  Ramaphosa wrote in the newsletter:  “Our approach is not to dramatically cut the size of the public service, but to examine the rate at which wages grow.  Public service wages have on average increased at a much higher rate than inflation over many years, and we need to fix this if we are to get public finances under control.”  He noted that growth in the wage bill had been crowding out spending on projects that could drive economic growth and on items that were critical for service delivery.  He said Mboweni’s budget gave a “sobering assessment” of the economy and that it was unsustainable for the country to be spending far more than it earned.

• Read the original of the above report by Alexander Winning at Moneyweb
• Read too, Ramaphosa says key state wage bill savings will stem from lower wage growth, not job cuts, at Fin24

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