This where you can watch Mboweni’s #MTBPS

Mboweni’s speech comes ahead of the much anticipated Investment Summit, led by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

The parliamentary budget office (PBO) has forecast that the national budget deficit will reach 4% of GDP this year, compared to National Treasury’s estimate of 3.6%.

The PBO’s estimate is in line with that of Moody’s and is based mainly on lower than expected growth for the current financial year. It also made a more pessimistic forecast of the level of debt as a percentage of GDP, predicting that it would reach 52.2% in 2020/2021.

It told Parliament’s standing committee on finance that optimism about global recovery had been replaced with uncertainty, and emerging markets were feeling the impact of recent sharp downturns in the exchange rate.

However, in terms of revenue collection, the picture was looking better for South Africa than expected.

PBO officials raised a number of questions about the government’s stimulus package and its potential impact on the economy, saying there was scant detail on the planned allocations and whether government spending on this would be “deficit neutral”.