Budget Office says Treasury overstates economic resilience
The Parliamentary Budget Office told a joint meeting of finance committees that the Treasury wrongly treats the budget surplus and an improved risk premium as resilience. It cited low growth, high unemployment and backlogs.
The criticism follows the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement that Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana delivered last week. The Budget Office said South Africa performs poorly against other countries in International Monetary Fund (IMF) data. It said this will continue for the next two years.
Seeraj Mohamed, deputy director of the Budget Office, said the artificial intelligence boom in developed countries cannot be seen as a positive sign for government finances. He said the boom leads to a sell-off of government bonds and a search for investments in emerging markets. He also said South Africa remains an outlier on unemployment compared with India, Brazil and Mexico.
Parliament's economists said the limit on spending has added to large backlogs in infrastructure and socio-economic improvement. Mohamed said: "We clearly don’t have the resilience that we are talking about or thinking about, and we really need to rethink how we measure resilience and economic performance"
Key facts
- Who
- Enoch Godongwana (Finance Minister); Seeraj Mohamed (deputy director of the Parliament's Budget Office); Parliament's Budget Office (parliamentary economists critiquing the MTBPS); National Treasury (government department whose budget reading is criticised)
- What
- The Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) told a joint meeting of finance committees that the Treasury's reading of the budget surplus and risk premium overstates South Africa's economic resilience, citing low growth, high unemployment and backlogs. The critique follows the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement delivered by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana last week.
- When
- 27 October 2026
- Where
- South Africa
- Status
- Reported