The speaker of the parliament said on Tuesday it was working to ensure finance minister Malusi Gigaba’s speech would take place as scheduled.

South Africa’s parliament has postponed Jacob Zuma’s state of the nation address on Thursday amid pressure for him to resign.

Speaker Baleka Mbete said: “This postponement has taken into account the scheduled tabling of the national budget in the next two weeks and we are going all out to make sure that the budget is not disturbed or postponed at all.”

South Africa scored highest, along with New Zealand, on global budget transparency in last week’s Open Budget Survey, which found efforts to make budgets more transparent have stalled for the first time in a decade.

The finance minister said last month that South Africans would have to “bear some pain” as a result of the “tough decisions” made in the budget to stabilise the country’s debt.