Gauteng to get an additional R1.9bn

Gauteng finance MEC Barbara Creecy delivered the province’s mid-term budget policy statement on Thursday, announcing that the finance department has allocated an additional R1.9 billion to its provincial budget.

The provincial department of finance announced the R1.9 billion addition to the province’s R121.4 billion, as of March 2018.

The department said the provincial adjustment is derived mainly from its revenue collection which, it said, has surpassed its targets by 10%. The upward adjustment of R1.9 billion takes the province’s 2018/2019 budget to R123.2 billion.

Budget allocations announced by Creecy include:

• R128 million, which includes R118 million for the compensation of families affected by the Life Esidimeni tragedy, has been allocated to the office of the premier.
• Economic development will receive R18.5 million.
• The department of health receives R284.3 million
• The department of education has been allocated an amount of R438.2 million
• Social development will receive R25.9 million
• Cooperative governance and traditional affairs will receive R65 million
• Human settlements was allocated R49.2 million
• Roads and transport received an additional infrastructure amount of R329.9 million
• Community safety was allocated R32.5 million

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has said Creecy’s “budget speech might have sounded good but truly speaking, it was not new”.

The party’s spokesperson on finance in Gauteng, Mike Moriarty, said: “There is no new infrastructure, there will be no new jobs. Indeed, it would be interesting to compare previous years’ speeches to see how much was the same.”

Moriarty said the speech had “some shocks”, which included Creecy shifting “R1.2 billion from unspent infrastructure money from past years to the inefficient departments of health and education to pay for the salary increases that Minister Mboweni refused to pay for”.

The DA spokesperson continued: “Of this, R81 million will go toward funding Cuban doctors while thousands of locally qualified doctors are not being allocated posts are being forced to sit at home or emigrate to seek work.”

Moriarty said the R92 billion Creecy announced would be spent on infrastructure development has not increased from past years but has actually decreased.

He said the DA welcomes the announcement of an addition of R300 million to upgrade and maintain roads in the province.

“This will go a long way in addressing the many issues faced by road users in the province.”

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