In a world turned upside down by the performative antics of US President Donald Trump, it is easy to lose one’s bearings and one’s cool. And while the South Africans that entered the White House rabbit hole last week kept their cool, they must still have felt somewhat disoriented.

The same could be said of this year’s Budget, which has been a truly dizzying experience.

Owing to the inclusion of proposed hikes in the value-added tax rate, the first two versions failed to secure political support both inside and outside of the Government of National Unity (GNU).

These failures created an unprecedented crisis for the country and even raised the spectre of a possible collapse of the recently formed multiparty GNU itself.

In what could be described as one of the understatements of the year, National Treasury director-general Dr Duncan Pieterse acknowledged that it had not been a “normal” Budget.

Fortunately, though, neither he nor under-fire Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana showed any inclination that they were clinging to the prospect of a return to the ‘old normal’.

Both have seemingly embraced the need to adapt to changing circumstances; an attitude that permeated the events surrounding the release of Budget 3.0, as well as the associated documentation released on May 21.

In a briefing, Godongwana acknowledged that there had been a failure to anticipate the changes that political parties expected with regards to the Budget following the reality that no single party won a majority in the 2024 elections.

He added that a new process of consultation was required.

That said, he also argued for the amendment process to remain “cumbersome” to ensure that any changes met the same thresholds of fiscal prudency and rationality that the National Treasury itself needed to achieve when drafting a Budget. Likewise, to ensure that politicking didn’t result in any steep fiscal cliff edges.

The Minister also argued that the negotiations surrounding the 2025 Budget had deepened the understanding of all involved of the policy trade-offs and the institutional processes involved in drafting and amending a Budget.

“Negotiation, debate and compromise, as we have seen unfold over the last weeks, has been a necessary, if sometimes painful, investment in the productivity of future government reform in the new political environment,” he added.

For his part, Pieterse stressed that the National Treasury was committed to learning from and building on recent experiences and reported that it was developing a framework for public participation as part of its review of the Budget process.

These reforms, he indicated, would be designed to strengthen government and institutional commitment to fiscal sustainability, refine Budget prioritisation and the functioning of budget structures, and improve data systems and capital budgeting, monitoring and reporting.

Given the delay in passing the 2025 Budget, it is essential that these ‘new normal’ processes be finalised without delay, as they are likely to add to the already intensive consultation load that the National Treasury already bears.