The Eastern Cape’s R31-billion budget was welcomed on Thursday by opposition parties and interest groups except the Democratic Alliance, which expressed some reservations about certain issues.
The Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa) has expressed concern about declining expenditure on housing and local government programmes in the Eastern Cape as planned in the next three-year medium term expenditure framework (MTEF).
Idasa budget information services representative Sasha Poggenpoel said it was a matter of grave concern that in terms of the province’s MTEF, expenditure for housing is to drop from the outgoing financial year’s R739,1-million to R703,5-million in the incoming fiscal year of 2004/5 and will drop to to R675-million in the 2005/06 year.
”Given the low level of development and the need for housing in the province, this is a matter for concern,” Poggenpoel said. She also expressed concern about a drop from the current the R241-million for local government programmes to R195-million in 2004/5 and R193-million in 2005/6.
However, she commended the province for increasing expenditure in agriculture by 45%, saying this boded well for rural development.
Nontlahla Zilwa, a representative of the Transkei-based Zilwa Financial Services, a financial and accountancy consultancy, also commended the agricultural allocation increase, saying the budget managed to take rural development into consideration through agricultural projects.
”At least we are moving forward in the Eastern Cape. This will also provide jobs for our people. However, there is a need to transfer skills to the rural people to sustain these projects,” Zilwa said.
The United Democratic Movement’s Mothusi Letlaka described it as a ”good budget”.
The fact that 80% of the budget will go to social services meant that the poor will benefit, he said.
”We welcome the public works programmes plan, as people need jobs. The question is whether these will be implemented. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
While the DA’s Eddie Trent welcomed parts of the budget, he expressed reservations about certain aspects.
He also welcomed the increased education budget. He said while welfare expenditure has increased drastically it was a problem that the economic development cluster had remained static over the past ten years.
”This is one of the reasons that we suffer from an unemployment rate of about 54% in this province. We wish to point out that this will not create sustainable long term jobs,” Trent said.
He said while the DA welcomed the extended public works programmes, it wanted those programmes to lead to creation of long-term jobs so as to alleviate poverty in the province. – Sapa