South Africa’s pockets are empty, says National Treasury

The country's debt crisis has forced the government to spend close to nothing on SA's essential services such as education, health care and infrastructure. So dire is the situation that Treasury official Edgar Sishi has now said there is no money. According to Eyewitness News, Sishi first sounded the alarm in June when he said that the repayments on debt were so high that they left little room for Treasury to accommodate basic services. "Additional spending will require higher debt, and this comes with high interest. Rising debt service costs are crowding out our ability to pay for health and education services. Next year, payment on interest will be higher than spending on health and the year after that, payment on interest will be higher than total spending on basic education," said Sishi. Municipal bad debt, corruption, mismanagement of funds and the money used for the Covid crisis are also understood to be the source of Treasury's woes. – Bernice Maune. .South Africa says no extra money available for next three yearsBy Prinesha Naidoo and Antony Sguazzin___STEADY_PAYWALL___.(Bloomberg) – Any additional allocations will have to be funded from reductions in other programs, either within the department's budget, or from another department's budget, according to the document presented by Edgar Sishi, the acting head of the budget office, to the National Economic Development and Labour Council this week, and seen by Bloomberg.The Treasury said in a supplementary budget presented in June that it planned to raise an additional R40-billion in revenue over the next four years.The document presented this week shows that will be made up by R5-billion in 2021-22, R10-billion in 2022-23 and in 2023-24 and R15-billion in 2024-25.Additional tax measures will be announced in February, according to the presentation. Improvements in collections by the revenue service will help and research and analysis is being done on wealth taxes, it said.A spokesperson for the National Treasury verified the document.

South Africa’s pockets are empty, says National Treasury

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