SIZE OF GOVERNMENT
Our government must live within its means. We propose significant reductions in the public sector wage bill, a balanced budget, and a commitment to avoid unnecessary debt and taxation.
Fiscal Responsibility
Government spending should become more prudent and align more closely with the interests and financial circumstances of taxpayers.
- Swiftly and significantly reduce the public sector wage bill by eliminating government departments and ministerial portfolios that do not strictly relate to an explicit constitutional obligation.
- Place a strict, fixed limitation on the number of deputy ministers, retaining only those absolutely constitutionally or practically necessary.
- Introduce a requirement that the budget be balanced in the second year of the term, followed by a percentage point increase in the budget surplus for the remainder of the term.
Tax Reform
The first financial priority of a free people should not be to support government profligacy, but to provide for their own prosperity.
- Implement a modest income tax cut and begin tangibly phasing out all non-standard taxes, including excise, sin, estate, capital gains, and luxury taxes.
- Abandon the pursuit and implementation of tax initiatives which seek primarily to unduly influence the behaviour of economic agents, such as climate or wealth-related taxes.
- Implement a moratorium on any further tax increases for the remainder of the term.
- Projected revenue shortfalls, and attaining a balanced budget and budget surplus, should be funded with further reductions in the wage bill, voluntary fundraising, and constraining the government’s mandate, as opposed to increases in debt or taxes.
Privatisation
The concentration risk and inefficiencies associated with state monopolies in key economic sectors should be mitigated.
- Enable communities and enterprises to compete freely and without undue hindrance with Eskom, Transnet, and PRASA, and eliminate the state’s majority ownership stake in each of these companies.
- Implement a moratorium on the establishment of any new state-owned enterprises without the concomitant privatisation of an existing one that would cover the cost.