The Week Ahead: It's budget week

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's budget speech on Wednesday will dominate the headlines this week. The Minister has a tough job to do as he seeks to address significant social challenges and reassure investors about the country’s growth prospects. The speech itself will largely focus on the planned use of taxpayer funds, measures to secure the country's fiscal and financial position, and steps to strengthen public finance management.

pravin

During the 2016 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement, the Minister highlighted the drought (including water security challenges), the rising cost of debt and food prices, a volatile commodity market, unemployment, domestic structural weaknesses, administrative shortcomings and the global slowdown as some of the major impediments affecting the country.

In his State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Jacob Zuma highlighted that the economy is still not growing fast enough to create the jobs the country needs. In response, government will focus on a few key areas packaged as the Nine Point Plan to reignite growth so that the economy can create much-needed jobs. In addition, the state will play a role in the economy to drive radical economic transformation. The Minister will flesh out these measures in his speech.

Commentators and analysts have also made their predictions with many expecting the Minister to introduce tax hikes and address the following topics: the review of the tax system, the country’s industrial strategy, maintaining the existing financial sector policy framework, procurement budgets and the public sector wage bill. The spending on government’s social and infrastructure programmes are also expected to feature quite strongly.

With a modest forecast and government revenue declining, all eyes will be on the Minister to see what balancing act he achieves.

What happens after the speech?

The debate will move from the chamber to the committee corridor where - spread out over a couple of months – committees will hold hearings with the Minister, Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), Treasury, relevant departments, statutory bodies, economists and civil society before rushing out with a report (Parliament is currently reviewing the time frames and sequencing associated with the different financial instruments and bills, and the parliamentary procedures related to them). At the same time, the various money and tax bills which give effect to the changes and appropriations in the budget will be processed. This process hardly ever results in some change to the Budget. Attempts by the opposition to bring in amendments of their own are always repelled.

Elsewhere, the National Assembly chamber has scheduled the following items on its agenda for Tuesday: consideration of international instruments, members' statements, motions and a subject for discussion (Government’s failure to improve the lives of young South Africans with regards to employment, education and training).

The lower chamber has also arranged a sitting for Thursday where, amongst other things, there will be a statement by the Minister of Health on the circumstances surrounding the death of mentally ill patients and lawmakers will consider the report of the Ad Hoc Joint Committee tasked with recommending candidates for appointment to the NYDA Board.

The committee corridor is stacked with meetings this week, offering a blend of interesting and drab topics as well as some legislative meat. Here is a run down of the highlights:

On Tuesday, MPs will get briefings on the various scenarios for South Africa’s future electricity mix, planned legislation to deal with wildlife crime (including rhino poaching) and Climate Change Mitigation research.

The budget theme is in full swing when the Joint Standing Committee on Appropriations, Select Committee on Appropriations, Standing Committee on Finance and Select Committee on Finance receive a pre-budget briefing by the Parliamentary Budget Office. Each year, the PBO provides independent and non-partisan analysis of the budget cycle, fiscal policy and the financial implications of proposals. There's some genuine legislative meat for MPs to chew on as they deal with several pieces of legislation this week. These include the Performers Protection Bill; Liquor Products Amendment Bill [B10-2016], National Forests Amendment Bill [B11-2016] and National Veld and Forest Fire Amendment Bill [B22-2016], Refugees Amendment Bill [B12-2016];

The Ad Hoc Committee on the South African Broadcasting Corporation Board Inquiry will begin considering its final report. The Committee gave all participants in the inquiry time to consider its interim report and will now look at their responses.

On Wednesday, legislators will receive briefings on the crime statistics, financial support for dealing with the derelict and ownerless mines and registration at universities and TVET colleges.

There's some important law-making afoot on issues from reducing red-tape for business, to protecting indigenous knowledge systems, ensuring land tenure, protecting whistleblowers and providing a legal framework for foreign service officials working outside the country.

By this stage, you can't blame the MPs sitting on the Standing Committee on Appropriations, Select Committee on Appropriations, Standing Committee on Finance and Select Committee on Finance, if they are experiencing budget fatigue. They will be meeting for a third consecutive day on the topic on Thursday and this time the Minister of Finance will brief them on the 2017 Budget.

On Friday, there will be public hearings on the Performers Protection Bill.

View the full schedule here.

*This summary is based on the schedule as it is published on Monday morning. The programme is subject to frequent updating so the link above needs to be checked daily to confirm the programme for the day.

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