Chairperson, the Revised Fiscal Framework details a decline in revenue, an increase in the budget deficit and reduced GDP growth. This means that our macroeconomic circumstances and outlook have deteriorated since February this year. As a relatively small open economy, there is no doubt that we are an innocent bystander, severely impacted upon in the fallout from the great recession and the current European debt crisis.
We are, however, also experiencing the result of the national government's incoherent economic policy and inability to contain a massive systemic leakage problem within the public financial system.
The Special Investigating Unit estimates that government corruption and negligence are costing R30 billion per annum. This means that if the people's money was properly managed, the deficit would be reduced by one percentage point, along with a reduction in the cost of servicing our national debt.
Although we believe that the Minister of Finance is sincere in his determination to root out this theft of the people's money, the time for talking is over and we need to see some action, especially given that the problem is showing up in the numbers of the fiscal framework.
The DA's alternative budget for 2011-12 adopted an expansion in the fiscal stance aimed at productive spending on the supply side to accelerate economic activity. The government missed this opportunity and increased expenditure on the demand side, especially on the public sector wage bill, in the mistaken ideological view that the state can create jobs.
The government should rather create an enabling environment so that entrepreneurs and small- and medium-size enterprise can flourish, and should rather silence the nonsensical and growth-destroying debates on nationalisation and expropriation without compensation.
We did not support the fiscal framework in February and we will not support the Revised Fiscal Framework now, because the economic policies and spending patterns behind the numbers are not working to reduce poverty and unemployment. Thank you, Chairperson. [Applause.]