... that the recession would bypass South Africa.
The Reserve Bank appeared before our committee and frankly told us that the Minister's growth projections are inflated and they themselves worked on something more realistic: around 2% growth in the foreseeable future.
This is not the end of it. Having decided to borrow us into major problems on the basis of such an optimistic outlook, Minister Gordhan candidly told us nobody knew if the recession was really over, and it may very well be much longer and deeper before it's over. Therefore, we are borrowing ourselves against the untested best-case scenario that the Minister himself warned us not to give much credence to. To me, this sounds like a daredevil's fiscal policy.
It gets worse. In order to reduce the borrowing, which would otherwise go to R3,6 trillion by 2015, Minister Gordhan took out of the Budget R846 billion's worth of public expenditure for infrastructure and placed this cost directly on the consumers' shoulders at the time of their most dire and greatest indebtedness.
There is no answer to the fundamental question of how this enormous debt will be paid off. The only thing we know is that perhaps we will stabilise at a constant rate over balanced growth. [Interjections.]