(4 minutes read)
· Members and supporters of Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party denounced South Africa’s borrowing from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, when they rallied at Cape Town in South Africa
· They lodged their protests while finance minister Enoch Godongwana was delivering the annual Budget Speech
· South Africa had secured US $4.3 billion from the IMF
· The EFF members and supporters believe that multilateral lenders as economic terrorists and the fact of borrowing as economic genocide
Members and supporters of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party denounced South Africa’s borrowing from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, when they rallied at Cape Town in South Africa. They lodged their protests while finance minister Enoch Godongwana was delivering the annual Budget Speech.
South Africa had secured US $4.3 billion from the IMF. The EFF members and supporters believe that multilateral lenders as economic terrorists and the fact of borrowing as economic genocide. They maintain that there’s a clique within the national treasury of the country. They control and make dangerous decisions. Even the finance minister and his deputy are not aware of the procurement of loans the party leaders claimed. In January, South Africa took US$750 million from the World Bank to strengthen its pandemic response.
In the meantime, South Africa’s finance minister said that economic recovery would be difficult, at least in the short run. The economy is battered by the Covid-19 pandemic, riots and endemic graft, he warned. He was presenting the annual budget of the countryAccording to the budget papers, economic growth was projected to be 2.1 percent this year. It will be dropped to an average of 1.8 percent over the next three years, the minister said.
Covid-19 restrictions, the minister said, had affected the economic recovery, plunging millions of people into unemployment. South Africa had 3.6 million Covid cases and nearly 99,000 fatalities. It is the continent’s hardest-hit country. Apart from the natural calamities, the country has been rocked by riots in July last year which wiped more than US$3 billion off after businesses were looted in the two most populous provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
