South Africa’s nine provinces have notched up a steadily improved performance in spending their nationally allocated HIV/Aids conditional grants during the last three financial years, according to Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
Replying to a question in Parliament from Democratic Alliance member of Parliament Mike Waters, who asked what was the total conditional grant allocation for HIV/Aids to each province and what amount of the budget was spent, she said that there was R209,5- million spent in the 2002/03 financial year, which amounted to 99% of the grant allocation of R210,2-million for all nine provinces.
In the previous financial year — 2001/02 — R46,1-million had been spent of an allocation of R54,3-million. This amounted to a spending level of 85%. This was up from a spending level of just 67% in the previous financial year — 2000/01 — when just R10,2-million was spent of an allocation of R15,2-million.
KwaZulu Natal received the largest allocation in the last financial year of R52,4-million but it spent R80,8-million or 154% of the allocation. This represented a turnaround in spending from a level of just 14% in 2000/01 when only R135 000 was spent of a limited budget of just R1-million.
The second-highest allocation of R31-million went to Gauteng last year but it spent only R16,1-million or 52% of the grant allocation.
According to this year’s budget review Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has provided R333,5-million in 2003/04 to finance HIV/Aids conditional grants for the health sector in the provinces. The review notes that the significant increase “is to give effect to cabinet decisions and to implement additional programme priorities including post exposure prophylaxis for victims of sexual abuse, rollout of mother-to-child transmission prevention and targeted interventions for commercial sex workers while maintaining other HIV/Aids prevention programmes”.
The allocation is set to rise to R481,6-million in 2004/05 and again to R535-million in 2005/06 in terms of the medium term budgeting process.
The education sector also received R127,4-million to fight HIV/Aids in the last financial year and this is set to drop this year to R120,4-million in 2003/04 although it rises again to R128-million in 2004/05.
This is earmarked for the rollout of the HIV/Aids life skills programme at schools.
The social development sector also received R58-million for the HIV/Aids fight in the last financial year, rising to R65-million for 2003/04. This is targeted at home-based and community based care. – I-Net Bridge