South Africa’s 2025 budget is a cautious step toward fiscal stability, with debt peaking at 76.2% of GDP in 2025-26 and a narrowing deficit. For employees, it offers short-term respite but lacks the ambition to transform lives.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana delivered the 2025 National Budget Speech on Wednesday (12 March). The budget addressed several key points, including the country’s current economic status, growth projections, substantial debt servicing costs, proposed increases in VAT and sin taxes, and the continuation of the social relief grant.

B udget announcements are rarely dramatic events in South Africa. But the statement on March 12th by Enoch Godongwana, the finance minister, could be the most consequential since the end of white rule in 1994.

As South Africa awaits the 2025 Budget, Casey Sprake warns of key issues that could shape the nation’s future.

Ordinary South Africans are walking away from the 2025 budget bruised and bloodied. Government not only proposed an increase in the value-added tax (Vat) rate, but their income tax burden has increased by R18 billion.

The South African rand fell on Wednesday as disagreements in the ruling coalition persisted despite the finance minister scaling back the size of a contentious tax hike in a revised budget. The budget has been the biggest test so far of South Africa's fractious coalition politics,

South Africa's finance minister unveiled Wednesday a budget with a smaller increase in value-added tax than previously proposed, but it was immediately rejected by a key party in the unity government.