Tag: zero-based budgeting

Should budgeting and planning be considered an outdated discipline? Given the rapid rate of change and high levels of unpredictability in the world today, should accountants press reset on the corporate performance management landscape? And, is it possible to plan, forecast and budget when once-in-a-lifetime events seem to take place every other week?

Every Budget is preceded and followed by the mantra that the Finance Minister faced serious challenges. No, that is never true. All Budgets are easy and straight forward. If they promote prosperity, then countries, including governments and the poor, get rich. All that’s needed is for Budgets to raise rather than lower economic freedom scores – more freedom, more prosperity; less freedom, more poverty. It is that simple.

Taxpayers were listening very closely as Tito Mboweni delivered his annual budget speech. Taxpayers can however breathe a sigh of relief as no increases in tax rates will be incurred despite a year of national lockdown and the roll out of the vaccine.

Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni delivered his Budget Speech 2021 to Parliament on Wednesday, February 24. This document provides an overview of key information relating to the economic outlook, government revenue and expenditure, fiscal balance, and the public debt trajectory.

The 2021 Budget was tabled to Parliament on 24 February 2021 by South African Finance Minister Tito Mboweni.

Finance minister Tito Mboweni favours zero-based budgeting, an approach that would weigh each expenditure item, each departmental budget, against government goals. The Minister has said that this would entail focusing on ‘infrastructure development and other growth-enhancing measures’ and come at the expense of those programmes considered wasteful in relative terms.