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Budget speech contradicts SONA: Malema

EFF leader Julius Malema led his fellow MPs out of a disciplinary hearing against them in Parliament. Picture Credit: Gallo Images
EFF leader Julius Malema led his fellow MPs out of a disciplinary hearing against them in Parliament. Picture Credit: Gallo Images

Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene's 2015/16 budget speech contradicts President Jacob Zuma's state-of-the-nation address as there was no emphasis on the Freedom Charter, Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema said on Wednesday.

"There was nothing [of the] Freedom Charter. Actually we are now told that the mechanism [is] to meet objectives of the National Development Plan and nothing emphatic about the Freedom Charter," he said in reaction to Nene's budget tabled in Parliament.

"So the president's speech actually is completely different from what the budget is being directed to.

"The budget's supposed to finance what the president spoke about and those are serious contradictions and that's why... we say they don't mean what they say."

Malema said the EFF was especially disappointed with government's approach to revenue collection, stating that corporate tax should have been increased.

"We are very disappointed with the revenue, in particularly the raising of personal income tax, and leaving the corporate tax untouched," Malema said.

Tighter, stricter rules on transfer pricing needed to be introduced, as it would generate a lot of revenue so that the financial obligations of the state could be met.

"For the first time now the minister of finance and ANC government acknowledge that transfer pricing is a big problem," Malema said.

The increase of social grants should not be celebrated, since doing so would be a celebration of mediocrity, Malema said.

"We are not impressed with the issues of social grants. All we need is jobs for our people. They should have introduced a very clear mechanism on how jobs are going to be created in order to reduce spending on social grants," he said.

He praised the increase in education and health care spending, but would have been happier had taxation within the education sector, particularly on textbooks, been targeted in the budget.

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