Deputy Speaker, as the other speakers have indicated, these Tax Amendment proposals were part of 2019 budget announced on 20 February by the Minister, but have only been processed recently due to the May elections and the changes in the administration. Now we know that the fiscal outlook has deteriorated significantly since February, where the budget has set to be far high at 5,9% up from 4,5% of Gross Domestic Product, GDP.
This is mainly as the result of slow in economic growth of 0,5% and this then of course results in lower tax revenue, and of course in other side we see increased support to state-owned enterprises, SOEs, as you, Minister, have indicated, where does this money going to come from? It has to come from somewhere. We also see a staggering increase in the government debt of R3 trillion to R4,5 trillion or 71,3% of GDP by 2022-23.
So, it is thus crucial to collect all outstanding taxes that are due, and of course it is critical that there must be legitimacy to tax collection. Fallen civil years of tax increases, there's very little space to increase
taxes, and we know the average South African is already overtaxed. As far as these Amendments to the personal income tax are concerned, the proposals, as the previous speakers have indicated, aim to raise R12,8 billion from not adjusting the tables for inflation. In other words, that's the bracket creep.
This is directly going to be taken from your working class and the middle class, which will have fewer funds to spend. The other reports deal with submissions on the tax and tobacco industry. It is also argued that steps have to be taken to address illicit tobacco industry, and there seem to be like R9 billion that should be collected. Now, the issue there is not so much to freeze and exercise duty on the so-called sin taxes.
Minister, we fully support the sin taxes, but the tobacco industries obviously said that there should be a freeze on that because it will result in job losses and reduced income. We therefore agree with the committee that the increase in illicit tobacco product is as a result of weak law enforcement and tax administration challenges at SARS, and that needs to be addressed.
Also, we agree that the committee needs to focus more on Monetary Law Enforcement to stop the illicit of tobacco trade as well as monitoring the improving SARS capacity. This is part of what was lacking in the Fifth Parliament. We must make sure that we exercise sufficient and efficient oversight. We saw in the Fifth Parliament an estimated R50 billion loss of revenue per year. We are now paying the price of state capture and corruption.
So, this is an issue which we feel very strongly about, but we regret the R12,8 billion which will come from the working class. Thank you.