South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said he sees no reason to resign following his U-turn on a proposed tax increase that threatened to rupture the nation\u2019s coalition government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Godongwana faced calls from some opposition parties to step down after he scrapped a proposed increase in the value-added tax. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reversal came days after he said he sees no alternative to the increase, which was set to raise the levy to 15.5% from 15% on May 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is my constitutional job to propose money bills in parliament,\u201d Godongwana told Bloomberg TV in Washington, on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring Meetings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve not done anything untoward by proposing revenue in terms of the constitution. Over the years I\u2019ve managed this budget properly and this economy properly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The proposed VAT hike threatened to unravel the government of national unity formed by the African National Congress in June after it failed to win an outright majority in elections. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Democratic Alliance, the second largest partner in the alliance, went to court to block the increase and opposed it in parliament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The move leaves questions over how the resulting R75 billion budget gap will be filled, and what now happens to the so-called government of national unity. Godongwana said the government would have to re-evaluate its spending proposals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOn expenditure side, there will be consequential implications in terms of some of the items that will not be funded,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While he was not part of the political discussions around the future of the coalition, the removal of the VAT increase made it possible to have a \u201crational discussion\u201d on the budget, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There would be no \u201cred lines or non-starters\u201d in those talks, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana said he sees no reason to resign following his U-turn on a proposed tax increase that threatened to rupture the nation\u2019s coalition government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":713112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13716],"tags":[17448,3921],"class_list":["post-822206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-budget-speech","tag-enoch-godongwana","tag-international-monetary-fund"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=822206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822207,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/822206\/revisions\/822207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=822206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=822206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=822206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}