As government reconsiders its expenditure, certain ministries will suffer cuts to their budget votes. Lynda Loxton reports
As parliamentary committees started examining the 1996/97 budget votes of the various ministries this week, it was clear that the Ministry of Defence is hurting the most from the reprioritisation of government spending.
South African National Defence Force (SANDF) finance chief of staff lieutenant-general Ben Raubenheimer told the defence committee that the defence force budget was 51% lower now than it had been in 1989/90 while the percentage devoted to staff costs had risen from 18% to 33% because of the integration of the defence and liberation forces.
“There is a danger that because of the lack of expenditure on capital budget, a lot of our current inventory will become obsolete just after the year 2000,” Raubenheimer said.
He said the SANDF had requested R11,8-billion for 1996/97, but had been told to cut this back to R10,4-billion, or a cut of 2,7% in nominal terms and 8% in real terms.
One cut was a request for R234-million for four corvettes to patrol the coast, which caused an outcry and led to accusations of the SANDF wanting to “buy toys for the boys”.
Democratic Party MP Douglas Gibson asked why the defence force did not have multi-year budgets so it could plan ahead. Raubenheimer said although the defence force had wanted to do this since 1968, “government was normally loath to commit itself too far ahead.”
The treasury was, however, moving into multi- year budgeting, which would help. Gibson said with all its other priorities, the government probably saw the defence force as the easiest budget vote to cut “and we should be trying to get politicians on our side to make sure that we get the cash”.
He said that the SANDF should be taking the lead to make the public aware of when equipment would be obsolete “because the public is not all that sympathetic and one has to persuade them over a period that it is in the interests of the country [to buy the equipment].”
The Ministry of Safety and Security was also less than happy with its budget, which had been slashed from the requested R10,1-billion to R9,8-billion. But it pledged to try to live within it, even though that might be rather difficult given the increased policing tasks expected of it as crime soared throughout the country.
The other end of the scale, the Ministry of Agriculture seemed fairly happy with its budget vote this year, which rose 7,4% to R863,4-million.
A common theme in all the hearings, however, was the fact that the rollover of unused funds had become acceptable because of logistical or legal obstacles. A main problem had been the need to integrate departments from the South Africa and the former homelands into single national departments and, where need be, transfer functions to the nine new provinces.
MPs expressed concern about the trend towards rollovers, which has already been targeted by the parliamentary finance committee for specific attention.
They said that rolling over hundreds of millions of rand at a time when several sectors were crying out for attention sent the wrong message to the public at a time of growing disillusionment about non-delivery.
Several directors general said they believed they were on top of the problem and that spending would start to flow smoothly again this year.