Honourable Speaker and Deputy Speaker
Honourable Premier and Cabinet Colleagues
Behind a budget are people, real people with real needs and aspirations. The budget is an instrument to facilitate the journey of change of change. While a budget is a technical document, it must be informed by normative and political dimensions to give effect to a government’s mandate.
Our mandate is clear: build an open opportunity society.
Central to this mandate is to create choices for citizens, encourage personal responsibility and reward excellence.
A budget must rally behind the future vision.
Therefore, Madam Speaker, I table in this House today a:
- Budget for jobs
- Budget for service delivery
- Budget for safety
- Budget for youth
- Budget for infrastructure
- Budget for Climate Change; and a
- Budget for good governance.
Commenting on the Budget tabled by Minister Tito Mboweni on 20 February 2019 Nick Spaull, of the Financial Mail describes the national budget as not a SONA Budget but rather a ESKOM Budget. The state of Eskom is the state of the South African economy. Ten million people are out of work and unemployed. South Africa is in a period of weak economic growth, a revenue shortfall and an increase in national debt.
State owned enterprises continue to fail because of fraud corruption and maladministration. SOE’s continue to drain South Africa’s resources. South Africa experienced disastrous load shedding in 2014/15, with the economic cost estimated nationally at R20 billion (for stage 1 load shedding) and R80 billion (for stage 3 load shedding) per month. For the Western Cape, this represented between R3 billion and R8 billion per month, and slowed down the upward momentum of economic growth. In response, the Western Cape Government established the Energy Security Game Changer in 2015, whose main purpose has been to reduce our dependence on Eskom and diversify our energy sources, with a focus on renewable energy.
Much has been achieved since 2015. The Game Changer, together with GreenCape, has assisted municipalities to put in place the regulatory frameworks that would allow their customers to install rooftop solar PV and receive compensation for extra electricity fed into the municipal grid. In 2015, only two municipalities had this legal framework in place; today, 22 out of our 25 municipalities that distribute electricity have this in place. The generic municipal by-law and policy guidelines developed in the Western Cape are now being used by other municipalities in South Africa to enable regularised rooftop solar PV installations.
The Western Cape has actively promoted the installation of solar PV. From 18 Megawatts of installed solar PV in 2015, we now stand at 112 Megawatts – an increase of over 600 per cent. We have also addressed energy efficiency in provincial buildings. Since 2015, electricity consumption in our buildings has been reduced by 13 per cent, and our consumption is an impressive 38 per cent below the industry benchmark.
And yet, once again, we are faced with load shedding. The Western Cape is now more energy-resilient than it was in 2015, but it would be much more so had national regulatory obstacles been cleared away. For example, Municipalities are currently prevented from purchasing electricity from Independent Power Producers, and their ability to do so would have had a substantive material impact on Municipalities’ energy resilience. In June 2018, the Premier wrote, to Eskom highlighting her concern that there was again a significant risk of load shedding and was assured that Eskom was taking the necessary steps to avoid this.
On 25 February 2019, the Premier convened a special Premier’s Coordinating Forum (PCF) to identify actions that Municipalities could take to mitigate any further load shedding that may take place. Our analysis suggests that in the next five years, there is a significant risk of load shedding owing to a deterioration in coal plant capacity and the planned closure of old coal-fired plants that produce thousands of megawatts. Short- medium-, and long-term options were presented at the PCF. In the
short-term, municipalities need to ensure that there is clear, timeous communication on load shedding to customers through their websites, social media, and other methods. Municipalities have done well to date in sharing this information effectively.
There is also the possibility that Municipalities will be able to procure power from Independent Power Producers in the near future. The City of Cape Town initiated legal action on this issue in 2015, and recently urged the High Court to prioritise it on the court roll. Municipalities need to prepare themselves for such procurement processes in the meantime. Apart from these measures, the Western Cape Government is also actively pursuing the importation of liquefied natural gas (LNG) into the Western Cape through Saldanha Bay. It is finalising a feasibility study which confirms that there is sufficient demand for natural gas and that the availability of natural gas will contribute significantly to the competitiveness and growth of our industries.
Full speech: Western Cape 2019/20 Budget Speech
