The South African Parliament spent R502,7-million in the financial year ending March 2003 or R22,5-million more than the target budget, according to documents presented to its rules committee.
The target budget had been R480,2-million.
While this is not viewed with as much concern as, for example, overruns by a government department, the authorities of Parliament are nevertheless taking the action of drafting legislation that would make Parliament accountable to a tighter oversight process by political representatives.
Administrative expenditure alone jumped from a target of R97,5-million to just more than R114-million — R16,5-million over the target.
Earlier this year, however, in the estimates of national expenditure Finance Minister Trevor Manuel noted that for the past four years the administration bill of Parliament had jumped 115% in the four years to accommodate restructuring.
He noted that spending on administration had increased by an annual average of 16,6% — well ahead of inflation — over the four years 1999/2000 to 2002/03.
This increase facilitated the restructuring of offices and services to improve performance and service delivery, the estimates noted.
National Assembly Speaker Frene Ginwala expressed concern at a rules committee meeting, in particular about the overruns in the administrative budget and said it was important that Parliament itself “needs to be accountable to the public” as far as its own finances were concerned.
This year parliamentary spending is set to rise substantially. The budget allocated to Parliament for the budget year 2003/04 is R627,9-million, including what is referred to as the direct charge — R192-million for members’ salaries, pensions and medical-aid contributions.
Harry Charlton, the chief financial officer of Parliament, noted that although Parliament operated “in the sentiment of” the Public Finance Management Act — which governs spending procedures of government institutions — the Act did not specifically apply to Parliament.
Parliament, it is argued, requires greater budget flexibility. For example, if MPs are required to monitor, for instance, an election in one of the Southern African Development Community countries, an unbudgeted item may arise during the parliamentary year.
However, there is concern about spending substantially exceeding budget targets.
Official opposition chief whip Douglas Gibson said: “It is clearly not satisfactory that Parliament should have a substantial overrun of its budget … the budgetary process has been unacceptably casual and the parliamentary Budget subcommittee habitually gives far too little input into the process.”
The committee includes members of the government and the opposition.
Gibson said the National Treasury then simply “imposes a figure which might or might not be realistic as a budget target”.
In 2002/03 spending on inventories — including stationery and general printing — was just short of R11-million compared to a target of R7,8-million.
The biggest rise in administrative expenditure was for members’ travel — the subject of an ongoing controversy about abuse of vouchers — which exceeded the target amount of R36,4-million by R13-million — totally R49,4-million.
Telephone costs were R2-million higher than anticipated — totalling R13-million. Mileage claims by members was R2,2-million over the budgeted amount.
The direct charge was R172,8-million in the last financial year, about R4,6-million more than the budget target. — I-Net Bridge