{"id":13729,"date":"2012-08-21T15:04:54","date_gmt":"2012-08-21T13:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/08\/s-africa-says-rising-debt-welfare-spend-sustainable\/"},"modified":"2012-08-21T15:04:54","modified_gmt":"2012-08-21T13:04:54","slug":"s-africa-says-rising-debt-welfare-spend-sustainable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/s-africa-says-rising-debt-welfare-spend-sustainable\/","title":{"rendered":"S.Africa says rising debt, welfare spend sustainable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">JOHANNESBURG<\/span> Aug 21 (Reuters) &#8211; Despite rising debt levels<br \/>\nand increased social spending, South Africa is on a sustainable<br \/>\nfiscal path, Deputy Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene said in a<br \/>\nspeech sent by email on Tuesday.<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Social expenditures, which include assistance grants and<br \/>\nhealth and education spending, account for 58 percent of<br \/>\ngovernment expenditures, compared to 49 percent 10 years ago.<br \/>\nThe number of social grant beneficiaries reached 15.6 million in<br \/>\nMarch 2012, Nene said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Preliminary indications are that the trajectory of social<br \/>\nspending as it currently stands in the budget is sustainable,&#8221;<br \/>\nhe said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Ratings agency Standard  Poor&#8217;s told Reuters on Monday they<br \/>\nwere concerned about the country&#8217;s trajectory of rising debt.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At the moment as far as the debt dynamics are concerned on<br \/>\nthe government side, we are still moving in the wrong<br \/>\ndirection,&#8221; said Konrad Reuss, managing director of Sub-Saharan<br \/>\nAfrica at Standard and Poor&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Deputy Finance Minister Nene said South Africa needs to<br \/>\nstabilise the growth of the country&#8217;s debt, which stands at<br \/>\nabout 35 percent of gross domestic product.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>He reiterated that the growing government wage bill was of<br \/>\ngreat concern since it is the second-fastest growing component<br \/>\nof spending.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This would not be a problem if productivity of public<br \/>\nofficials was also rising strongly, but we know that government<br \/>\nfalls short on many fronts where service delivery is concerned&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Xola Potelwa; Editing by Jon Herskovitz)<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright\">\n<p>         \t\t\u00a9 Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JOHANNESBURG Aug 21 (Reuters) &#8211; Despite rising debt levels and increased social spending, South Africa is on a sustainable fiscal path, Deputy Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene said in a speech sent by email on Tuesday. Social expenditures, which include assistance grants and health and education spending, account for 58 percent of government expenditures, compared to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-13729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}