The Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) has significantly increased spending on both social and economic infrastructure for the third consecutive year; and this is a result of interventions implemented to address project planning, budgeting and implementation.
As at end of the financial year, GPG spent R8.7 billion on infrastructure projects and this represents 96% of the total budget for infrastructure. On an annualised basis, total expenditure increased by 8% compared to the previous financial year.
The Gauteng Department of Education and the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development were the main drivers of expenditure in the provincial infrastructure programme.
Key projects within the education infrastructure portfolio implemented in the 2012/13 financial year include:
- construction of news schools
- upgrading of existing schools to include Grade R classrooms
- rehabilitation and refurbishment to seventy schools
- provision of additional mobile classrooms and ablution blocks in various schools
- maintenance of various schools.
“The provincial government is improving in the alignment of planning with the budget cycle. However some projects and programmes were affected by supply chain management processes. This resulted in these projects commencing towards the latter part of the financial year thereby exposing them to the rainy season and the builders break in the December and January months,” Finance MEC Mandla Nkomfe says.
“The Gauteng Provincial Treasury will soon present proposals on how to improve supply chain management processes for all infrastructure departments so that we further enhance spending in this regard,” MEC Nkomfe adds.
In the year under review, various alternative infrastructure delivery initiatives were explored mostly within the education sector in an endeavour to improve the implementation of. These included the utilisation of alternative delivery materials and contracting approaches. These and other efforts will continue in future.
Province spends nearly its entire budget
Gauteng Provincial Government departments spent 99% of their total adjusted budget for 2012/13 financial year.
This expenditure which amounted to 74.7 billion represents a substantial improvement on the previous year and shows that GPG departments continue to improve spending to meet the service delivery needs of the people of Gauteng.
“The province managed to keep expenditure on compensation of employees within the budget, but more work needs to be done to manage personnel numbers especially for labour intensive departments. In other words human resources/capital management should continue to receive prominent attention within departments, from planning, budgeting and implementation,” Nkomfe explains.
Contact:
John Sukazi, MEC Spokesperson
Cell: 083 772 4885
Tel: 011 355 2161
E-mail: john.sukazi@gauteng.gov.za
