All eyes on Somyo’s budget
ANC expects increased funding to go to agriculture to boost job creation
FINANCE MEC Sakhumzi Somyo will today table the provincial budget, a speech the ANC expects to be “radically” biased towards agriculture – the department the ruling party believes can be central to job creation.
However, the opposition Democratic Alliance believes unless Somyo cuts waste, boosts growth and shifts resources from non-core towards core expenditure, the province will never turn the corner.
Somyo has already been allocated R61.8-billion by National Treasury as the province’s equitable share, a budget which is based on the size of the population and related demographic as well as other indicators.
This is R3.7-billion more than last year’s allocation.
In addition to this will be the R11.3-billion budget the province received from Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan in conditional grants.
The DA’s Bobby Stevenson said: “MEC Somyo must do two things with this budget – boost economic growth and ensure greater value for money expenditure.
“The country and the province are now operating in an extremely tight fiscal space.
“The MEC needs to spell out in no uncertain terms how we can extract greater value from our existing resources.”
Last year education received 44.5% (R31-billion) of the total budget, while the health department received 29.1% (R20.2-billion).
ANC provincial secretary Oscar Mabuyane said unless there was a major shift in budget allocation from the traditional consumers of the provincial budget towards agriculture, “we will continue to have more domestic workers than people who work our land and produce food for everyone to eat – a situation which is of great concern to us as the ruling party.
“If it means injecting more budget to agriculture and agrarian reform, let it be. We must be able to change the way we do things in order to be able to create jobs,” he added.
In his budget last year Somyo allocated R45.2-million to pay the province’s 144 208 civil servants, averaging R313 000 as a total cost to government per employee for the next financial year.
The Dispatch reported at the time that this placed most Bhisho government employees in the top 1.3% of salary earners in SA, according to average wage figures for 2015 produced by Statistics SA.
Stevenson said one of the main culprits of a bloated bureaucracy was education. “There needs to be a move away from non-core expenditure towards the core business of the department – fewer administrators, more teachers and more resources spent on schools.”
Mabuyane said it would be central to Somyo’s budget “to put money where money is needed most”.
“We know that education remains a priority because by doing that, we invest in our children’s future, but it is equally important to ensure that one gets value for money.”
The party also highlighted the importance of injecting more funds in primary healthcare rather than corrective measures such as buying drugs for people who are already sick. —