Spending on social services remains the key component of South Africa’s Budget rising from R229,8-billion in 2005/06 to R262-billion in 2006/07.
In the Budget review released on Wednesday in tandem with Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s Budget speech in Parliament, education gets R92-billion of consolidated spending — which includes national and provincial spending.
Education remains the biggest consolidated Budget item at R110,3-billion in the 2008/09 estimates. Education received R83,5-billion in 2005/06.
Social security and welfare — including social grants — is the next largest slice of the social services allocation and it amounts to R80,6-billion in 2006/07 up from R73,1-billion in 2005/06.
Health spending rises from R48,7-billion to R54,5-billion in this time, while the housing allocation rises from R7,8-billion to R9,2-billion in this time.
Economic services amount to R84,9-billion in 2006/07 up from R71-billion.
The largest component of this spending category goes to transport and communication, which gets R33,2-billion in the 2006/07 financial year — up from R26,5-billion in 2005/06.
Protection services amounts to R79,6-billion in the 2006/07 estimates — up from R74-billion in 2005/06.
Consolidated government expenditure includes national provincial and social security fund expenditure and also spending by various public entities and government business enterprises.
It also includes 22 sector education and training authorities, research councils and various boards, the Post Office, the Airports Company of South Africa and various other entities.
Consolidated allocated expenditure — excluding interest expenditure and the contingency reserve — will amount to an estimated R460,6-billion in 2006/07, up from R404,9-billion in 2005/06.
Interest expenditure is expected to be R55,7-billion in 2006/07 — a similar amount to 2005/06.
Including interest expenditure and the contingency reserve, consolidated expenditure will rise from R460,6-billion in 2005/06 to R518,8-billion in 2006/07. It will rise to 568,5-billion in 2007/08 and again to R622,2-billion in 2008/09.
The annual average growth in the medium term expenditure is 10,5% on average.
The review notes that within the protection services cluster, expenditure on defence and intelligence declines as a share of the total — it rises from R27,2-billion in 2006/07 to R29,4-billion in 2008/09. In this time the protection services share rises from R79,6-billion to R91,5-billion. This was because outlays on the special defence procurement programme — to reequip the air force and navy — were being phased out.
Strong growth in the police and justice functions was reported — with the police allocation rising from R33,8-billion in 2006/07 rising to R40-billion in 2008/09.
The justice department allocation rises from R7,6-billion to R9,3-billion in this time.
In the medium term, community development gets the largest increase — of 28% on average — rising from R25,5-billion in 2006/07 to R35,3-billion in 2008/09. – I-Net Bridge