The emphasis of the spending trend in next February’s budget is likely to fall on provinces as well as on local authority spending rather than on national departments, a senior South African Treasury official said on Tuesday.
Neil Cole, director of Budget reform, told members of the parliamentary Budget committee that after a 3% growth in GDP last year, the economy had slowed in the first half of 2003.
“There has been a slow down in the economy, the strengthening of the rand has inhibited some of our exports and higher interest rates have held back investors.”
“There will be far less money to increase the (Budget) baseline … considerably less.”
While higher levels of growth could be expected in the outer years of the three year
budget process — in 2005 and 2006 — he said any increases in 2004 in the baseline are likely to go towards the provinces and to municipalities.
He said strategic priorities included the extension of the child grant and school nutrition programmes, hospital improvements and municipal infrastructure and employment. Land restitution — a national function — would be a priority which would be “built upon”.
National priorities, however, would be the building of courts “and there are plans in
place to increase the number of policemen and women … 60 000 over a three year
period”. He said capacity of the police force would be an issue including their forensic and detective work.
Other national priorities would be e-government, the Hanis (home affairs) smart card system, assistance to SMMEs, higher education restructuring and the national student financial aid scheme, skills development, the implementation of a government security agency and targeted regional assistance in Africa.
Local government priorities would include municipal infrastructure and the extension of free basic services and low-cost alternatives for rural and small scale water supplies. – I-Net Bridge