Consumers should brace themselves for yet another spike in the fuel price when diesel is expected to rise by some 30 cents a litre in November.<\/p>\n
And despite the South Africa’s rand showed signs of modest recovery on Friday, having hit a six-week low at the start of the week, finance minister, Malusi Gigaba told Bloomberg on Thursday, that National Treasury would struggle to maintain the nation\u2019s budget and spending framework.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the period in which we are, where the revenue targets are obviously not going to be met, yet the expenditure ceiling remains in place, we will need to implement both revenue side and expenditure side measures that are going to assist us to achieve our budget targets and spending priorities,\u201d Gigaba said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.<\/p>\n
Stats SA reported that the economy had grown by just 1.6% over the last five years, despite the global economy growing at 3.3% over the same period.<\/p>\n
According to Neil Roets, CEO of debt counselling firm, Debt Rescue, petrol will most likely increase by about 10 cents a litre in November, having climbed almost 30 cents a litre in October, and nearly 50 cents the month before that.<\/p>\n
Roets said that consumers remain under pressure: \u201cThe gravity of the situation is reflected by the fact that Debt Rescue is showing a year-on-year increase of almost 25% in clients who want to go under debt review because they cannot repay their debts.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth African consumers have consistently notched up the unenviable reputation as having one of the highest debt ratios as a percentage of GDP among emerging market economies.\u201d<\/p>\n
A recent survey conducted among some 5,000 Debt Rescue clients showed that the most prevalent type of debt remained personal loans (27.99%) closely followed by credit card debt (23.77%).<\/p>\n
Store cards gobbled up 14.60% of debt while overdrafts represented 12.45% of outstanding debt.<\/p>\n
Debt Rescue stressed that many of these instruments carried extraordinary high interest rates making it very difficult for indebted consumers to repay them at the originally agreed terms and conditions.<\/p>\n
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