Finance Minister, Mthuli Ncube has announced that austerity measures the government introduced this year will be over by next year. He expects the economy to have started showing life by then.
Ncube added that:
We need to go through some period of austerity, but build towards prosperity and I tell you that next year you will hear me use the word austerity less and less because we will start entering prosperity.
I think I will limit austerity just to one year and then we move to prosperity towards 2023. But quite clearly, you can’t do austerity for three years; it’s a bad idea. One year, get it right and move on.
The government is solvent. We are running surpluses and we have been doing an average surplus of a $100 million a month since September last year.
This year alone, in January, we had a surplus of $102 million. In February we had a surplus of $85,5 million (and) in March our surplus would be double that.
It will be just above $200 million. Money supply is not growing. So where is the pressure on the exchange rate coming from?
Ncube asserts that the pressure emanates from speculation.
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