One third of South Africa's 37.9 million people are enrolled in schools, colleges, universities and technical colleges. Some 500 new clinics have been built, bringing health services closer to five million people. Free health care to 32 million people without medical aid is still being maintained and five million primary school children are part of a government feeding scheme. However about 21 percent of it will go towards servicing the state's debt. Education receives the highest vote at 28 percent of non-debt spending, while 12 percent goes to welfare and social grants.
GEAR is intended to push growth by emphasizing labour market flexibility, among other things.
Manuel says government expects GDP to grow by three percent this financial year, and by four percent at the turn of the century. Government hopes that MTEF will enable every rand to go further, to deliver better services, more infrastructure, more poverty relief and more reconstruction. Under a system inherited from an undemocratic and non- transparent apartheid regime that used successive budgets to promote social inequality and race privilege, parliament cannot amend the budget.