East Coast Breakfast breaks down the 2018 budget speech
Renowned economist Andrew Padoa chatted to the team about the recent Budget Speech and how it would affect consumers.
The Budget Speech can be quite daunting and hard to break down, so the team spoke to economist Andrew Padoa in an exclusive Breakfast budget breakdown interview.
Overall, he rated the speech 8/10, saying it was a good speech but we still have a long way to go.
Listen as he shares his thoughts in the podcast below:
Apart from Minister of Finance Malusi Gigaba quoting Kendrick Lamar's lyrics in his speech, he also spoke of budget cuts and additional expenditure.
Major increases included value-added tax (VAT) and tax increases.
Read: Value-added tax increases to 15%, a first since 1993
The huge elephant in the room, being tertiary education, was also mentioned and has left many smiling, but also asking a lot of questions.
Read: R57 billion set aside for free tertiary education
Other sectors where the government has promised to make a valued spend over the next three years are:
- R528.4-billion on social grants.
- In total R324-billion is provided for higher education and training, including R57-billion of new allocations for fee-free higher education and training.
- R792-billion will be spent on basic education, including R35-billion for infrastructure and R15.3-billion for learner and teacher support materials, including ICT.
- R123.3-billion on subsidised public housing.
- R125.8-billion on water infrastructure and services.
- R207.4-billion on transfers of the local government equitable share to provide basic services to poor households.
- R667-billion on health, with R66.4-billion on the HIV/Aids and TB conditional grant.
- R129.2-billion to support affordable public transport.
What did you think of the budget speech this year?