I read an article that summed up the points made in the speech of our latest Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni.

It is a document that is full of this new unit of currency, the ‘bn’. Forgive me, I am guessing here but the bn has been created to save paper, I think. Well, not really. Before, one would write that the spending on new schools would be R32 834 677 000 but now we can just say that R32.8 bn will be invested in building and upgrading schools (as stated in the February 2018 Budget). See how wonderful this is? R32.8 bn is either R32 834 677 000 or R32 800 000 000 – there is a huge R34 677 000 that can just be swept under the carpet, stolen or paid for consulting fees . . . and all none the wiser.

Okay, okay. We know that o’l Tito is just making it simple to understand, not so? Waaal! I find a number like R32 bn a bit brain numbing. I mean that is R32 thousand million, not so? So you could certainly build quite a few schools for that. If each school was R10-million, you could build about 3 200 schools. Or, if each school was R30-million, about 1 100 schools. But if we realise the round-off error in the whole thing, it could go 10 schools either way. Not very accurate.

I note that, of the February 2018 Budget, R22 bn went to/will go to feeding 9 m learners at 19 800 schools. Is this right? R22 bn is R22 000 000 000, right? If you divide this by 9 000 000 learners, then each learner will be fed on R2 444 a year or about R10 a day. Does not seem enough. I do not want to be too cute, but what happened to the packed lunch? Okay, there may be those who have no such thing, but are there many of them?

Moving right along, Tito gave us some hope by advising that a new electricity grid could be created, without State-owned utility Eskom, to distribute electricity from independent power producers. It is estimated that these producers are currently creating 61 000 jobs. This is about 15 jobs for each megawatt. Sounds not right, but . . .

Of more interest is “new electricity infrastructure to distribute electricity from independent power producers”. Why would one want to do this? Why would a Finance Minister think this is a good idea? Does he know that solar power goes off at night and the wind does not always blow? Does he grasp that renewable energy in South Africa is about 4 000 MW, which is about a tenth of conventional generation?

But there was one thing in the speech which was pure gold, tucked away in a corner: He said that “government is considering long-term reforms in electricity, telecommunications, transport and logistics”.

“Reviews of administered prices in other sectors such as energy are under way,” he also confirmed. It is unclear whether this would mean that electricity and even petrol prices could be determined by the private sector. Oh, so bring it on. If electricity prices could float with the market, it would really make a very big difference. One of the biggest would be to prevent the profiteering which right now is prevalent. Overall, prices would fall; if your turbine is steaming away at peak time and power is needed suddenly – win-win.