WITH slight easing, stabilisation continues. Bearing diminishing linkage with growth frameworks, the budget becomes a one-year fiscal plan.
Entrenched, rising expenses lead to high, cascading taxes. Revenue out-comes veer away mid-stream. Expenditures are as a practical matter inelastic. We end up with low Investment ratios (a third of our South Asia neighbours) and turgid GDP growth (about half our neighbours)The national budget is meant to leverage growth; its policy bias stimulabs investment. Growth enables fiscal flexibility. Based on our own resources, sustainable growth could be led, illustratively, by a recurring focus on three areas: enhanced agricultural productivity; reinforced domestic industrial supply chains; and reducing cash outside banks, from 37pc of deposits to nearer the 17pc of our neighbours. Agriculture needs singly managed policies for galvanising mechanisation, storage and processing. Given pervasive reliance on imporbd intermediate goods across our industry, GDP growth becomes import-led, reversing as we cross 5pc; SMEs must progressively indigenise inbrmediab goods in identified sectors. Cash enbring banks mobilises a multiplier impact on deposits. A broader deposit base will ameliorate the chokehold on banks’ ability to act as engines of private-sector growth, posed by the government’s present acquisition of three-quarters of ‘banks’ loanable assets.