The Em­ploy­ers’ Con­sul­ta­tive As­so­ci­a­tion (ECA) says it is deeply con­cerned that the 2025 bud­get high­lights a trou­bling un­der­ly­ing is­sue—there re­mains a sig­nif­i­cant deficit in nu­mer­a­cy and lit­er­a­cy skills with­in our pop­u­la­tion.

"This is an alarm­ing in­di­ca­tor that re­quires fur­ther in­sights and da­ta trans­paren­cy, al­low­ing all stake­hold­ers to bet­ter un­der­stand the depth of the prob­lem and col­lab­o­rate on po­ten­tial so­lu­tions," the ECA ex­plained.

Stat­ing that in an in­creas­ing­ly tech­no­log­i­cal world, such skill deficits can re­sult in the risk of falling be­hind in the glob­al race for de­vel­op­ment, the ECA urged that ed­u­ca­tion must not on­ly pre­pare in­di­vid­u­als for the tran­si­tion in­to the work­force but al­so adapt quick­ly to the on­go­ing trans­for­ma­tions in the world of work.

"Fail­ure to ad­dress these chal­lenges can se­vere­ly lim­it our fu­ture eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial," it added.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sues raised in the 2025 bud­get, The ECA said al­lo­cat­ing re­sources to the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor is al­ways a wise in­vest­ment, as it builds hu­man cap­i­tal and is a crit­i­cal dri­ver for re­duc­ing pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said it had hoped to see a recog­ni­tion of the need to main­tain labour laws that are cur­rent, fit for pur­pose and rel­e­vant to the needs of to­day’s work­place.

The em­ploy­ers' group said what was miss­ing in the 2025 bud­get was a clear time­line for re­view­ing and up­dat­ing key labour laws, as well as re­source al­lo­ca­tion and the ca­pac­i­ty de­vel­op­ment of in­sti­tu­tions vi­tal to in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions sys­tem.

The ECA made the com­ments in re­sponse to the Fi­nance Min­is­ter's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, stat­ing that it hopes that the Min­is­ter of Labour will speak to these is­sues and clar­i­fy the way for­ward in his con­tri­bu­tion to the bud­get de­bate.

Per­tain­ing to VAT ar­rears and re­funds, the ECA said the al­lo­ca­tion of in­ter­est-bear­ing VAT bonds and the com­mit­ment to pay SMEs in cash by De­cem­ber 31, 2024, rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant step to­wards ad­dress­ing this long-out­stand­ing is­sue. The busi­ness sup­port group said ad­dress­ing the VAT re­fund is­sue would al­le­vi­ate on­go­ing liq­uid­i­ty chal­lenges faced by many busi­ness­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly for small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.

Crime is an­oth­er area of con­cern for the ECA. It not­ed that giv­en the es­ca­lat­ing crime rates af­fect­ing both busi­ness­es and cit­i­zens, and the fer­vent na­tion­al out­cry for ef­fec­tive so­lu­tions in re­spect of pre­ven­tion and re­duc­tion strate­gies and de­tec­tion rates, the or­gan­i­sa­tion is con­cerned that there was lit­tle to re­as­sure cit­i­zens on this is­sue.

"In this re­gard, we urge those tasked with main­tain­ing the safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty of our cit­i­zens to en­sure that the cit­i­zens re­ceive val­ue for mon­ey and that they are

re­spon­si­ble and ac­count­able with the scarce re­sources be­ing al­lo­cat­ed," the ECA said.