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The IFP has welcomed Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's medium-term budget
policy statement delivered in Parliament today but said that many critical
challenges, such as unlocking faster job-fuelling growth, still remained.

Commenting on the mini-budget, Narend Singh the IFP's Spokesperson on
Finance said today, "The IFP warmly welcomes the increase in spending on
health - particularly for HIV/Aids prevention - the increase in spending on
infrastructure and the R50 million that has been set aside for drought
relief. In addition, we welcome Minister Gordhan's plans for better
financial discipline in service delivery and improved management of
education, health, and infrastructure programmes."

Singh said that while the IFP welcomed increase spending, it agreed with
Minister Gordhan that wasteful and inefficient patterns in State
departments, and entities, and in the use of resources must be rooted out.

"The IFP recognises that South Africans aren't receiving value for their
money. As the IFP, we believe that the performance and the reputation of
many State departments and public entities leave a lot to be desired in
terms of optimal service delivery and benefits to the taxpayer. As the IFP,
we don't believe that the answer lays in throwing more many at these
entities, but instead the focus should be on ensuring that the money is
effectively spent; which means that we need more accountability and better
management," said Singh.

In addition, Singh said that productivity remains a critical concern. "Each
year when the budget is tabled we allocate more resources to different
areas, but despite this, productivity is steadily decreasing. The countless
service delivery protests nationwide during the past financial year have
sent out a clear message that, amongst other things, our policing system,
our healthcare system, and our education system, despite it receiving the
biggest chunk of our budget, remains in a critical condition."

Singh said that while the IFP agrees that job creation requires a broad
range of policy initiatives, government's supposedly powerful new economic
policy framework, announced yesterday, lacked detail.

Speaking about government's new growth path for the South African economy
Singh said, "Creating sustainable jobs and long-term economic growth should
be our main focus but yesterday's announcement was just pie in the sky; it
lacked details on how government would achieve meaningful growth. We would
like to see more details on how government is planning to address crippling
unemployment, inequality and poverty."

Singh said the important issue that remained clear direction on, was how to
achieve higher growth. "The latest figures from the SA Statistical Service
show that unemployment is at 25.3 percent, which is alarmingly high. The IFP
has always emphasised that a 7-8 percent growth must be the goal that we
aspire to. National Treasury's data shows that if South Africa is able to
sustain 7 percent growth for 10 years, national income would double and the
economy would generate roughly 5.5 million jobs."

Singh said that government's investment plan in urban centres to help turn
cities into engines of economic growth was a step in the right direction.
Speaking about this new initiative Singh said, "While these interventions
are welcomed, we must not lose focus on the rural areas."