JOHANNESBURG - The markets have reacted to the news that the budget speech has been postponed to March.
The local market saw a slump.
The JSE All Share index is down by over a percent point after showing optimism ahead of the speech.
The rand has also taken a hit as the local currency lost some of its strength.
KPMG's Frank Blackmore said, "I think this is a surprising market reaction."
"I think everybody in the market was wondering what kind of budget this was going to be: would it be pro-poor, would it be pro-growth?"
"Of course we knew that there would be a lot of expenditure items that need to be covered and one of the big questions was where would they get the funding from?"
"I don't think we expected that funding source to be VAT, this is going to be heavily inflationary. It's 2% on all goods and services, two percentage points that it is."
"It erodes personal income of the common man and of course it's very regressive," he said.