South African president Cyril Ramaphosa will need political courage to introduce basic income support. Some form of basic income support is central to the South African government’s agenda. The lockdown-induced shocks have added to the crisis of structural mass unemployment and of poverty. There also seems to be broad consensus that basic income support is an essential part of the country’s social compact.
But the fiscal risks it poses to a fragile economy have not diminished. And government faces some hard trade-offs to ensure these risks are minimised and that other social spending is not compromised.
A small cash grant to […]
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