Gauteng residents owe billions of rands in municipal debts

Gauteng residents owe municipalities across the province R31.8 billion for services and taxes, Gauteng finance MEC Barbara Creecy said in response to legislature questions on municipal debt.

This amount represented 65% or the largest share of debt due to municipalities for services in the province. The second-biggest debtors are commercial customers, with R13 billion, or 27%. Government is the smallest debtor, accounting for 3% of the total outstanding amount, said Creecy.

“Overall, all district, local and metropolitan municipalities in Gauteng are owed R49 billion.”

Total aggregated debtors per customer type in Gauteng municipalities are as follows:

• The total outstanding debtors at June 30, 2017, year end at R49.076 billion.
• About R39.5 billion is overdue (over 90 days old).
• Households debt is the biggest (65% of R49 billion) at R31.8 billion, government debtors are the smallest at 3% of the total outstanding total (R443.5 million).
• Commercial customers are the second biggest at R27%, or R13.5 billion.
• Debtors in terms of water are the highest at 30%, or R14.6 billion of the R49 billion. Property rates and electricity debtors are at 19% (R9.1 billion) and 18% (R8.8 billion) respectively.

Creecy said the significant improvement in settling debts by departments had been due to the Debt Management Committee. This is an intergovernmental platform to facilitate one-on-one engagements between municipalities and provincial departments with the intention of managing the processes of provincial government debts.