Pretoria - Gauteng government departments have spent 99% of their total adjusted budget for the 2012/13 financial year, the Gauteng Provincial Treasury said on Monday.
Treasury said in a statement that this expenditure, which amounted to R74.7 billion, represented a substantial improvement on the previous year and showed that Gauteng Provincial Government (GPG) departments continued 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 management should continue to receive prominent attention within departments, from planning, budgeting and implementation,” Finance MEC Mandla Nkomfe said.
The provincial government said it had significantly increased spending on both social and economic infrastructure for a third consecutive year, 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 eight percent compared to the previous financial year,” it said.
The provincial Department of Education and the Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development were the main drivers of expenditure in the provincial infrastructure programme.
Some of the key projects within the education infrastructure portfolio include the construction of new schools; the upgrading of existing schools to include Grade R classrooms, and the rehabilitation and refurbishment of 70 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,” said Nkomfe.
The provincial treasury will soon present proposals on how to improve supply chain management processes for all infrastructure departments, so as to further enhance spending. – SAnews.gov.za
