Finance Minister Tito Mboweni announced grim revisions to South Africa’s fiscal framework when presenting his Covid-19-induced ‘Supplementary Budget’ speech on Wednesday, in which he likened the country’s rising debt profile to that of a hippopotamus “eating our children’s inheritance”. He used the backdrop of unsettling revisions to government’s medium-term Budget deficit and debt projections to make a firm commitment to stabilising debt at 87.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023/24.
