Maswanganyi warns against populist agendas against the Budget

Chairperson of the Standing Committee on Finance, Joe Maswanganyi, has warned against the promotion of populist agendas by political parties, including opposition to tax policy.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced an increase in the fuel levy during his Budget Speech before the National Assembly in Cape Town on Wednesday.

Some political parties rejected the increase.

Maswanganyi cautioned against protests designed to counter government plans to generate revenue.

“We should not promote a situation where we don’t want the public and the corporate to pay taxes. It will not be right that everytime the state talks about increasing a tax, we encourage protests. We are not going to run the state based on populism, because there is no state that can function without revenue. Otherwise, if you want to run the government and state on populism that you will never raise taxes, and you will never do that at some stage, the state is going to collapse,” says Maswanganyi.

Proposed fuel levy increase rejected:

Meanwhile, labour analyst Mojalefa Musi has described the latest Budget as regressive and has lamented the hike in fuel levy which he says will have a negative impact on workers.

Musi says the increase serves as a replacement to the VAT hike that was abandoned and does little to bring relief to workers.

“The elimination rather of a VAT hike to replace it with a hike in fuel levy is really robbing Paul to pay John, but if you look at the expenditure of workers, 40% of the workers earnings are on transport. So, if you push up for a levy, what it means is that you’re pushing up transport, you’re pushing up food, pushing up everything,” says Musi.

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