Madam Deputy Speaker, one element of this policy framework is perhaps more salient than many others. We have a welfare state, and we share the dream of creating a developmental state from it. Yet the industrial policy financed by this Budget and its relevant policy framework merely extends welfare to industry. This is to maintain the viability of industries that would not be viable but for the huge amount of direct and indirect subsidies, tariff and import protection, and cartel protection they receive. There is no real programme to create industries that can survive only on the strength of their products or services being internationally competitive and sought after.
A welfare state is a comforting and benign idea, but has a few drawbacks. It does not work in the long run and is not sustainable. It creates dependency and generates more of what it subsidises, including nonviable and parasitical industry. Plus, it takes more money from the less rich to be financed than it takes from the rich, as it ends up relying on indirect and hidden taxation, such as our cars costing twice the international market price. The extension of the welfare state into the industrial sector has an additional perversion. We are imposing a broad range of social responsibility obligations on companies across the board. These are handled by companies as a cost of doing business, which is passed on to consumers without affecting profit margins. It therefore operates as an indirect, regressive tax by which the poor pay more than the rich do when purchasing basic goods, such as telecommunications, at inflated prices compared to international prices.
Last year we said here that the Minister was not realistic in his deficit and national debt projections. We have been proven correct. They both seem to be out of control. By 2015, we are going to have in excess of R1,5 trillion's worth of national debt, which is worth about R300 000 per taxpayer, with not even a hint of a plan for its repayment. Furthermore, it is not something that we are not passing on to future generations. We are, because all these expenses are indeed operational expenses, to the extent that such a concept is applicable in today's world, where everything is amortised over no more than 40 years. On the contrary - the Minister tells us that the debt will increase steadily after 2015.
Behind it all there is a huge, hidden, skyrocketing municipal debt, which the Minister does not speak about or quantify and this Parliament continues to ignore, as if it will one day be paid by Santa Claus.
It does not help to carry state debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product, GDP. It is quite deceiving. That would be like me carrying my personal debt as a percentage of Anglo American's gross turnover. GDP belongs to the country, not to the state, and its income is already burdened by its own composite industrial, company and family debt, as well as an asset base that is much thinner than that of developed countries, where wealth has been accumulated over centuries. Therefore the long-term outlook is that of a downward spiral.
South Africans would have liked fewer taxes, especially the many indirect and regressive forms of tax which penalise the poor more than the rich. It is unconscionable to increase the fuel levy when common sense demands that it be abolished completely. It does not help to blame the recent increases in prices at the pump on the madness of the Butcher of Tripoli. It is our own madness that sucks economic life out of the most vulnerable segments of our economically active population.
If the citizen is to pay taxes on his gambling winnings, should he not be entitled to a deduction on his gambling losses? Have we really scraped the bottom of the barrel to get the last drop out of the taxpayers? Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Time expired.]