The election has come and gone, the new state President has come to power. The cabinet has been re-shuffled. Trevor Manuel is no longer minister of Finance, he has been replaced by Pravin Gordhan previously of SARS, who will now take care of our budget. This shows a fair whack of continuity with Gordhan already being intimately familiar with finance and planning. Manuel has moved on to the powerful new National Planning Commission. So what does this all mean for you? In a nutshell not much. You should still:
- Plan a budget
- Compare prices
- Cut down on luxuries
The fact that we had a peaceful and calm power handover is a great thing but does not detract from the fact that we are still in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the 1930's. The new government is at pains to prove that it is a sensible, serious and responsible player and the new cabinet has been designed to reflect this. There have been multiple indications of stability projected by the Presidency and our economy is looking much better than many others in the world, and we are expected to pull our selves out of the downturn relatively early. However just because the signals are looking right it is not the time to get too excited and start to spend again. Now is a time for saving.
The papers have looked at the new cabinet in depth and all the various ramifications thereof. Justmoney is not worried by the appointments and expects that economic policy will continue along much the same lines as before. As long as there are no major external shocks, and you have been working on your budget and have your finances down tight then there should be no worries and towards the end of the year the economy will start to look up on the wave of the World Cup. By the end of that this Presidential election will be history, the economy will have started to turn and the new cabinet will be settled and sorted already.