More spent on state debt than SA education

AN overview of government spending shows where your tax sacrifices have been spent.

A lot of your contribution goes to servicing debt‚ more money was spent on the police than on primary education‚ and more on defence than on environmental protection. This analysis was done by Statistics SA. “Government revenue‚ which includes taxes and other forms of income‚ amounted to R1.35-trillion in 2015-16,” Stats SA said.

“With total spending of R1.52-trillion‚ the government spent more than it earned.

“It spent more money on servicing its debt than it did on items such as housing‚ police‚ tertiary education and hospital services.

“Almost R129-billion was spent on public debt payments in 2015-16,” the entity said.

Stats SA quantified how the contribution of debt payments had crept up – in 2011-12‚ it was 7.2%‚ rising in 2012-13 to 7.4%.

In 2013-14 it was 7.8% and in 2014-15 8.4%. In 2015-16, it rose slightly to 8.5%.

“General services accounted for a quarter of government spending in 2015-16. Within this‚ debt payments accounted for 9% of the total and executive‚ legislative and financial services accounted for 12%,” Stats SA said.

“The latter includes the funding of general government services provided by institutions like the SA Revenue Service‚ the Treasury‚ the Auditor-General of South Africa‚ the financial and fiscal commission‚ parliament‚ and the various legislatures.

“Not surprisingly‚ big priorities for the government are education and social protection – which includes the payment of social grants.

“Together these two items contributed 32% of total spending.”

“Employee compensation provided 40.6% of the R1.37-trillion.”