South Africa faces a "serious debt crunch" of around R1.4-trillion by 2013 and the taxpayer will have to pay the bill, a Democratic Alliance MP said on Wednesday.

"If our economy does not grow as fast as projected, we will have a very serious debt crunch in South Africa," Deon George said at a briefing in Cape Town.

"It will accumulate over the next couple years until 2013 where we have over R1.4-trillion in debt, which is projected to be 43 percent of projected GDP."

George said the main reason behind the rocketing debt was poorly run parastatals, which were "falling over continually".

"We will get to the point where we don't have sufficient money in the economy to pay for these things and therefore, as the (finance) minister says, if things don't go the right way, we will have to push tax up and that is no good for the taxpayer."

He said if just R20-billion was brought into the fiscus by attracting private investment into parastatals, the deficit could be reduced by 0.9 percent.

The party's chief whip Ian Davidson said until the government had a coherent economic policy, it would be very difficult to resolve the situation.

"You have Pravin Gordhan (finance minister) talking about a relatively liberal policy mix and then you have Rob Davies (trade and industry minister) talking about greater centralisation.

"You can't have both without getting into financial trouble."

Davidson said over the last three years R243-billion had been set aside for rescuing state owned enterprises (SOEs), but it was still unclear what their role was.

"Is their function to deliver core functions or is it to earn revenue?" he asked.

"Until the government resolves that dilemma of which way it wants to go in terms of that growth path there is going to be continued confusion and paralysis at SOE level, which are the engine rooms of the development state."

It was also key to appoint "meritorious" managers at SOEs.

"You are going to have to put management in place that is fit for purpose. People who are meritorious. People who can guide those institutions."