South Africa’s Legal Aid Board ran a deficit of R19,2-million for the 2005/06 financial year, according to its annual report tabled at Parliament.
The report tabled on Tuesday — and introduced by chairperson Judge Dunstan Mlambo and chief executive officer Vidhu Vedalankar — shows that a government grant amounted to R453,2-million, of which expenses amounted to R485,3-million, including R252,1-million in personnel costs.
Administrative costs amounted to R118-million. The deficit from operations was R32-million, but interest received and other income reduced the deficit to R19,28-million.
This was in contrast to 2004/05 when there was an R11,2-million surplus for the year, although the government grant was just R390,5-million.
Expenses amounted to R391,9-million including personnel costs of R239-million and the deficit from operations that year was just R1,4-million, but this was turned into a surplus through about R12,6-million in interest received and other income.
Administrative costs rose sharply from R443Â 000 in 2005 to R118-million in 2006.
The board offers assistance, including legal representation, to “as many poor people as possible” to uphold South Africa’s human rights culture. — I-Net Bridge
The Legal Aid Board replies:
A total of 340Â 000 legal matters in the country were covered by the Legal Aid Board in the 2005-06 financial year. This was made possible by the R561-million allocated budget, and the actual expenditure including liabilities incurred at financial year end totalled R558-million.
Our annual financial statements may give the impression that we had a deficit for the 2005/06 financial year. This is purely a technical statement in the financial performance statement of the Legal Aid Board and should be read together with the budget and the cash-flow statement.
The budget includes the government grant and committed project allocations from the previous year, which are carried into the new financial year. This implies that the government grant allocated for a specific year does not on its own cover the expenses for the year.
The government grant plus the provisions from the previous financial year cover the cost of expenses for that financial year plus the financial commitments from the previous financial year that become payable/due in the current financial year. The nature of operations at the Legal Aid Board is that all our activities cannot be confined to a single financial year.