South Africa: State ignoring recession?

source: IOL
July 01 2009 at 05:09PM

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on Wednesday indicated government would not reduce spending because of the recession, but increase borrowings instead.

“After holding up reasonably well in the past year, our revenue collection has deteriorated in the first three months of this fiscal year,” he told the National Assembly during debate on his budget vote.

“At the moment, we are about R19-billion below our benchmark target for revenue.

“If the present trend continues, we could be as much as R50 to R60-billion below our target by the end of the year.

“Assuming that spending stays as budgeted, our deficit will be higher than we estimated in [continue reading]

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