Johannesburg, Feb 24 (AP) South Africa plans to spend USD 712 million to vaccinate some 67 per cent of its 60 million people to control the country's COVID-19 battle and get the economy to rebound from its decline of 7.2 per cent last year.

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said the vaccination drive will help South Africa's economy, the most developed in sub-Saharan Africa, to rebound by 3.4 per cent this year.

Mboweni announced the annual budget Wednesday, a day after the country's unemployment rate reached 32.5 per cent, according to the national statistics agency.

The unemployment rate among the youth is more than 60 per cent, a staggering figure in a country where more than 16 million people receive welfare grants.

South Africa's economy was already in recession before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and the government imposed a strict two-month lockdown.

The shutdown and continuing restrictions caused a serious economic contraction in 2020. An estimated 2 million jobs have been lost, according to the country's official statistics.

“With this framework we provide the budget for South Africa's vaccination campaign. This campaign allows us to emerge from the restrictions to economic activity. We are allocating more than Rand 10 billion (USD 712 million) for the purchase and delivery of vaccines over the next two years," said Mboweni, delivering his budget to parliament.

Mboweni said the vaccines would be given to all South Africans free of charge and his budget did not have any tax hikes for businesses or individuals in order to stimulate the economic recovery.

Last week South Africa launched the first phase of its vaccination campaign in which it is inoculating an estimated 500,000 front-line health care workers with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, as a large-scale observational study.(AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)