From Bloomberg Africa

South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan aimed to appease investors and voters ahead of May 7 elections as he stuck to spending limits to reduce his budget deficit targets while trimming personal tax.

A weaker currency boosted exporters’ income, enabling the National Treasury to collect 4 billion rand ($369 million) more than it expected in October and reduce the fiscal gap to 4 percent of gross domestic product in the year through March. Gordhan was able to provide tax relief of 9.3 billion rand for next year, mainly by adjusting tax brackets for inflation, even as he lowered the economic growth outlook for 2014.

“He probably did his best in trying circumstances to keep the peace, but it’s going to be very tricky in the coming years,” Kay Walsh, an economist at Deloitte LLP, said by phone from Cape Town yesterday. “From a rating agency perspective, I think he definitely helped to reassure them and investors that they are not about to change the debt trajectory too drastically, that it is sustainable and that they are going to be quite firm on curbing expenditure.”

Opinion polls show support for the African National Congress, in power since the nation’s first multiracial elections in 1994, has slipped amid rising discontent over a 24 percent unemployment rate and a lack of housing and sanitation services. Gordhan, 64, used his last budget of President Jacob Zuma’s current administration to highlight the government’s success in steering the economy out of recession five years ago.

Written by Rene Vollgraaff and Mike Cohen/Read more at Bloomberg Africa