By Jacqueline Mackenzie
Word Count: 173
The government viewed the vaccines as a public good and was committed to financing their roll out, with or without support from the private sector and medical schemes, the Johannesburg-based newspaper reported, citing Treasury Director-General Dondo Mogajane.
Other options the Treasury is exploring include widening the budget deficit and re-prioritizing government spending. The pandemic was a good case for emergency funding, Business Day cited Mogajane as saying.
The department of health has estimated a maximum cost of 20 billion rand ($1.3 billion) to vaccinate the entire country, while more recent internal estimates done by the Treasury are far lower than this, the newspaper said.
(Updates with the number vaccine doses South Africa has arranged in the second paragraph)
well, they could start by doing what they should have done years ago and putting SAA out of its misery – that would save (just on the current resurrection plans) more than half the money needed to vaccinate the entire country.
And of course, had they not banned smoking for months on end, and the sale of alcohol repeatedly, I suspect there would have been at least another R10-R20 billion in the tax kitty from that.
Instead, after destroying so many jobs during 2020, they plan to increase taxes to pay for the vaccine – who do they think has money to pay extra taxes after losing their livelihoods to the often irrational lockdown rules – and as already highlighted, after government left billions in potential tax revenue on the table due to their ridiculous bans…
We pay more than enough taxes already!!! If it wasn’t squandered, stolen and misspent, it would be more than enough. Use the SAA money as that will also just go down the drain line the rest of it. What a sick joke this obnoxious government is.