JOHANNESBURG - The 2025 Budget Speech scheduled for 19 February has been postponed to March after disagreements within the Government of National Unity over the budget.
Andrew Donaldson, a senior research associate at Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) explained some of the finer points of the National Budget to eNCA.
From 2001 to 2017, Donaldson served as a Deputy Director-General in the National Treasury responsible for the Budget Office and then the Public Finance division.
He has also served as the head of the Government Technical Advisory Centre (GTAC).
Donaldson said, "this is a very unusual move, it's never happened before and it's clearly a consequence of the Government of National Unity still having to reach agreement on some important details of the budget."
"I think that one has to say that the Treasury has done a huge amount of work, as it always does, preparing the budget documentation."
"That documentation was shared with journalists and others yesterday morning, late yesterday they have been given permission to use the documentation material. They pretty much have to because it had access to it all morning before the decision was taken to delay the presentation of the budget to parliament. Now there are going to be some changes: we anticipate," he said.