Gauteng province may have had to ask national government to sort out its troubled finances, but Johannesburg is rated the country’s most productive metro.
This is according to the Municipal Productivity Index (MPI) released by the local government intelligence service, Municipal IQ, this week.
The MPI measures the ability of individuals and economic agents to operate productively in their municipalities.
The results were released against the backdrop of a decision by Cabinet to place five departments in Limpopo province under the administration of the national government, with two provincial departments in the Free State. Gauteng, meanwhile, is to receive national assistance in administering financial management and supply-chain management processes.
Gauteng topped the municipalities’ performance by province for the first time. Western Cape municipalities came second, with Northern Cape municipalities third. Limpopo province came seventh of the nine provinces; its score of 49.3 was below the national average of 53.3. But the Free State, now subject to national intervention in two of its departments, came fourth. eThekwini, the Durban metro, followed Johannesburg as the second-most productive metro, overtaking Cape Town, which took third place.
According to Municipal IQ, eThekwini had a better expenditure record, when it came to its capital budget, benchmarked per resident.
Manguang, the Bloemfontein metro, was in seventh place in spite of the financial troubles of its provincial government.
The majority of the country’s most productive local municipalities, however, were in the Western Cape.
Eight of the 10 top performers were in the Democratic Alliance-run province, with Saldanha Bay ranked in first place.
The outliers were the Midvaal local municipality based in Gauteng at fifth and Gamagara in the Northern Cape, which came 10th.
The 2011 MPI figures showed little distinctive change from last year, in spite of recessionary pressure on revenue streams, MD Kevin Allan said in a press release this week.
“Although higher spending reflects higher operating costs, especially those associated with bulk electricity, clear gains in the number of indigent households supported means local government is expanding its developmental footprint,” he said.
But Municipal IQ economist Karen Heese noted that the results of the MPI remained unbalanced as rural and former homeland municipalities were still challenged by low spending and large infrastructure backlogs, resulting in poor scoring averages.
Municipal IQ also measures the level of service delivery protests taking place within major municipalities, going back to 2004.
The results this year showed a decline from the peaks in 2009 and 2010, with 81 protests recorded, compared with 105 in 2009 and 111 in 2010. The Western Cape and Gauteng had the most protests, at 24% and 22%. Limpopo had the lowest percentage of protests during this period, at 1%.