None of the social compact plans implemented by President Cyril Ramaphosa have worked. And the director of the Centre for Economic Development and Transformation, Duma Gqubule believes that this year’s State of the Nation Address will also allude to a plan that will eventually fail.
He says that government’s infrastructure fund announced in September of 2018 in response to the recession had also been downscaled. A total of R 400 billion had been mobilised for that fund, but by February 2019, Treasury had reduced the allocation to R 100 billion that would have been implemented over 10 years.
By 2021, Treasury had only allocated R 4 billion to the infrastructure fund, but it was cancelled in the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement. Gqubule says that this proves that South Africans should not take government seriously about this infrastructure plan.
He adds that government must put its money where its mouth is.
