Budget gets lukewarm welcome

Cape Town - There was a generally warm welcome among political parties for the budget presented in parliament on Wednesday by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel.

Many praised it as "well-balanced" and accepted as inevitable the abandonment of the budget surplus and the resurgence of the deficit.

Lance Greyling for the Independent Democrats reckoned, however, that3.8% was the outer limit for a deficit to be sustainable.

The Democratic Alliance wished that the minister could have cut corporate taxes, with the party spokesperson Kobus Marais saying that the economy needs the stimulus that such a cut could bring to industry.

His deputy, Dion George said: "We are a bit disappointed that he didn't cut the tax on corporates. We think that he could have done that, because if you are going to spend more you have to make sure you can stimulate the economy to pay for it."

Marais also said Manuel has to sell South African Airlines.

"Our suggestion would be to sell off certain state-owned enterprises such as SAA. We know that they sold Sasol and Iscor, and now they are very efficient.

The money for SAA is a stumbling block for many parties.

Narend Singh of the IFP said: "We are extremely disappointed that R1.6bn is being spent on South African Airways. There should be conditionalities, and before that money is given we should have a high level investigation as to what's going on in SAA."

The ID's Greyling also said his party didn't like the SAA bailout - but he also did not like the continuing money being lavished on the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, and wished the money could have been spent on developing renewable fuel sources.

Message of hope

Pieter Mulder, the leader of the Freedom Front Plus, also put the SAA bail out in his negative column, along with increasing fuel levies.

But Mulder was otherwise very pleased with Manuel's Budget. "I think Mr Manuel succeeded in sending a message of hope, in a time when there's really global gloom all over the world," he said.

"I was also impressed by the common sense: Teachers must teach; the land must be worked; the call for discipline in the spending of state money, that is surely hopeful."

Steve Swart of the African Christian Democratic Party was also enthusiastic. "The ACDP supports the Budget in broad terms," he said.

"We believe that the increased government expenditure will serve to simulate the economy in a time of global financial crises, and therefore we believe particularly the infrastructure will contribute through stimulating the economy, job creation which will address unemployment and poverty."

Louis Green of the Federation of Democrats liked the speech so much he compared it to the State of the Nation Address given by President Kgalema Motlanthe last week.

"Perhaps the ANC should consider running him for the president, instead of Jacob Zuma," Green said.

Two parties made specific mention of what Manuel was doing for education.

Motsoko Pheko of the PAC said the speech itself was quite comprehensive: "He spoke about unemployment, he spoke about poverty, development but he has not really said exactly what must be done. We have heard all that for a long time. The other thing of course is the question of education I think he's done very well on that."

Jackson Bici of the United Democratic Movement said: "We are happy with the amount of money that has been given to the department of education. We wish that the department of education will use it wisely and properly we need to see the teachers getting good salaries."

He added that the UDM is happy with the budget.

"Well naturally there are shortcomings here and there, but on the whole the budget it is good," he said."The deficit is there but we expected it instead of a surplus, because when people are starving we don't need surpluses."

Both Gavin Woods of the National Democratic Congress and Stan Simmons of the National Alliance declared it to be a well balanced budget.

Woods said that Nadeco appreciates the expenditure plans and the way some of those have been developed. "Happy that taxes didn't go up," he said. "Concerned about the lack of specific counter-cyclical and stimuli to counter the economic problems that we have."

- I-Net Bridge