Legislation on the Western Cape’s proposed fuel levy is expected to come into force in 2008, according to the provincial mini-budget tabled on Tuesday.
Western Cape provincial minister of finance Lynne Brown first mooted the tax two years ago, saying then that the target date for implementation was this year, at 10c per litre.
Tuesday’s medium-term budget policy statement said national enabling legislation was needed before the province could go ahead.
”The province has requested the national minister of finance to introduce such an enabling Bill by early 2007,” it said.
The province will then publish its own draft legislation, which should become law in the 2008 financial year.
The policy statement also said the province had begun researching the viability of tourism-related ”and other levies”.
It said Brown would make further announcements on these when she tabled the 2007 budget.
Western Cape spending improving
Meanwhile, the Western Cape provincial government had spent 46% of its budget by the end of the first half of the 2006/7 financial year, according to the mini-budget.
This compared favourably with last year, when first-half spending was only 44,3% of budget.
Over half of its transfers and subsidies had been spent, though the figure for allocated payments for capital assets was only 33,8%.
Underspending at the end of the 2005/6 financial year had been R283,3-million, or 1,3%, which compared well with the national underspending norm of 2%, as well as the Western Cape’s own 2004/5 underspending of 2,2%.
The increase in spending between February and March, the so-called ”March spike” as departments sought to use up their allocations before the financial year end, was 36,9% in 2005/6 compared with 54,4% last year. — Sapa