Staff Reporter
Free State Treasury MEC Gadija Brown is expected to deliver the supplementary budget for the province at 2pm Tuesday.
A statement released by the department said she will make a virtual presentation to the provincial Legislature, a departure from the norm owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This budget outline will be an offshoot of the national supplementary budget presented by Finance Minister Tito Mboweni last month in which he tried to charter a new path by stabilising debt and seeking new ways to revive the economy.
Mboweni’s budget, which initially got mixed reactions, sought to improve the government’s spending patterns and allow for savings in order to create what he called a foundation for economic revival.
There is however an ongoing debate on the fiscal consolidation measures outlined in the national supplementary budget with some critics expressing displeasure at the proposed cuts while international rating agencies and some local analysts remain sceptical on whether the new shift will be implemented.
Tuesday’s supplementary budget is not expected to be an easy delivery for the MEC as it comes on the back of another slump in South Africa’s gross domestic product which fell by 2.0 percent in the first quarter of this year.
Major contractions were recorded in the mining, manufacturing and construction sectors.
The drop is a consecutive decline in the country’s economy which contracted by 1.4 percent at the end of last year.
The Free State’s official unemployment rate reached 38.4 percent in the first quarter of this year.
Statistics South Africa said in its latest report of the Quarterly Labour Force Survey that the province lost about 29 000 jobs between January and March this year after several sectors shed jobs.
Using the expanded definition of unemployment, which includes people who have given up looking for work, the province has a rate of 44.5 percent, only second to the Eastern Cape with 48.9 percent.
There are fears the economic picture for the second quarter — which will include the lockdown period — might not be so rosy as several companies have either scaled down operations due to low economic activity or laid off staff, leaving thousands more without jobs.