Every year, towards the end of the month of February the Minister of Finance in South Africa addresses us as the country and the parliament in order to give us what we call the Budget Speech. This speech is meant to give us an overview of our National Income and Expenses for the previous financial year, and a forecast for the financial year ahead. Our fiscal year starts on the 1st of March every year and therefore this year’s one starts on the 1st of March 2023 to 29 February 2024 (so it is called FY23/24 year).
This is one of the key national speeches to listen to in my view, in order to understand how money moves from when you pay for a loaf of bread to how they determine how much to increase social grants and our grandparents’ pension from government should be. This helps us understand the bigger picture where money is concerned, because there is a relationship (direct or indirect) between how we understand and manage our own personal money to how the government does the same with the national purse.
The budget speech covers the following high level topics:
| Grant | Old Amount | Rand amount | Increase |
|---|---|---|---|
| Old age | R1990.00 | R2090.00 | R100 |
| Disability | R1990.00 | R2090.00 | R105 |
| Foster care | R1070.00 | R1130.00 | R60 as of 1 October 2023 |
| Child support | R490.00 | R510.00 | R20 as of 1 October 2023 |
This is another national crisis, and a key one in my view as it has direct impact on one’s standard of living. Unemployment has been a crisis for many years longer than loadshedding has been around. The two are directly linked in my view, because an unemployed person is one that is eligible for work but can either not find one or does not have an income generating business (formal or informal) of their own. So with continuous loadshedding and businesses losing money and eventually closing down, the rate of unemployment keeps getting worse.
Through the budget speech, we get to understand why things we buy keep getting more expensive, and how much of the price we pay goes to the Value Added Tax (VAT). VAT is currently at 15% of the price you and I get charged when we purchase items like groceries, appliances, clothes etc.
In conclusion, according to the analysis by Refilwe Moloto, executive producer and presenter at Primedia, the budget speech was overall positive. This means for you and I, we can have hope that even with some of the crisis we are facing at the national level, what the Minister of Finance, Mr. Enoch Godongwana delivered on the 22nd of February 2023 was overall a good budget and there is hope that if things work out as planned, we might be better off a year from now and hopefully beyond.
For the full budget speech, you may watch this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KDTsXhvzms or read the transcript from the National Treasury: https://www.treasury.gov.za/documents/National%20Budget/2023/speech/speech.pdf.
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