Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg has assured civil servants that government will pay out the long-delayed salary review payments next month.
This, he said, was despite the ongoing cash flow challenges affecting public finances, stating that government’s cash flow was really tight.
This was during the ‘Finance in Focus’ platform yesterday, where he provided updates on government cash flow, the payment of civil servants’ salary review back pay, decentralisation of revenue services, and border declaration.
Out of the E1.29 billion cost of the salary review, government previously implemented a staggered rollout by paying a 15 per cent portion of dues.
The remaining 85 per cent back pay balance, which is about E850 million, will be paid next month, marking the first month of the second quarter of the 2026/2027 financial year where government will receive E2.9 billion from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU).
The minister noted that they were trying to raise more budget support.
He said it takes longer to raise the funding and to be able to get concessional debt.
For the budget support, he said they were going back to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange with the hope of raising something there.
He said as weeks go by, hopefully government would start getting more payments and on a weekly basis they would pay what they can despite the fact that they were struggling to keep up with the bills as government.
He emphasised that they were busy with a plan to raise the money so that they can get on top of things properly and pay all the suppliers that are outstanding.
“At the same time, even though things are tight, we have got the salary review implementation coming up in July. And the whole reason why we set it for July was specifically because SACU receipts come in July.
“We earmarked for this back pay for civil servants and this SACU money is at least safe, it definitely will come in. Of the E2.9 billion, E850 million was set aside for the salary review back pay and that will take place even though we are in cash flow constraints,” said Rijkenberg.
