According to the Bank's 2012/13 annual report, published on Friday (28 June), Marcus was paid a hearty R4.99m.
The Reserve Bank also provided her accommodation at the official residence, a fringe benefit deemed to be worth R790,000 for tax purposes. Comparitively, Zuma's salary was R2.62m in the same year.
Marcus's three deputies could also make the president jealous with their pay packets.
Including all benefits, Daniel Mminele pocketed R3.8m, Francois Groepe R3.56m and Lesetja Kganyago R3.81m.
This compares favourably with the amount of between R1.3m and R1.6m that Kganyago would have been paid in his last full year as director-general of the Treasury.
While these amounts boggle the minds of most ordinary citizens, the Reserve Bank's executive directors at least seem to be putting their money where their mouths are by settling for below-inflation salary increases.
Marcus has, over the past year, called repeatedly for wage growth restraint and warned about the negative effect that high salary increases have on inflation, employment growth and South Africa's competitiveness.
At the monetary policy forum earlier this month, Groepe said wage restraint did "not only refer to workers, but to all of us".
Marcus's remuneration increased by only 4.46% from 2012 while the three deputy governors got average increases of 5.5%. Inflation, meanwhile, averaged 5.7% from April last year to this March.
Thandeka Mgoduso, chairman of the Bank's remuneration committee, said that the Bank's executive and non-executive directors would get no increases in the current financial year.
This follows a call by Zuma last year that CEOs and executive directors in the private and public sectors should consent to a freeze on higher salaries and bonuses.
Marcus said it was up to every institution to decide whether it wanted to implement a similar pay freeze or not. "We felt this was something important for us," she said.
The Bank's total staff costs rose 13.62% to R1.78bn as the central bank hired more people and gave a 7% increase to staff.
Overall, the Reserve Bank suffered a loss of R1.27bn in the year - more than three times the R409-million loss of the previous year - as it cost R1.56bn to issue new banknotes with the image of former president Nelson Mandela.
Marcus said this "was not the first year" the Reserve Bank suffered losses. "We are not an institution that is driven by profit. Nobody is comfortable making losses, but the objective is not to maximise profit. Our objective is to do our job. Sometimes you make profits doing that and sometimes you make losses," she said.
Source: Business Times via I-Net Bridge
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