Creecy: Gauteng government’s spending needs more discipline

During her medium term budget policy speech, Creecy made reference to wasteful expenditure by government departments in Gauteng and the need to tighten the reins on such spending.

According to Creecy, there were four aspects to the provincial treasury’s financing approach and this includes maintaining spending on quality public services, increasing spending on infrastructure, working towards eliminating waste and corruption, as well as establishing ways to increase the provincial government’s revenue and alternate funding mechanisms.

Creecy increased the budget by R237.7million – from R86.9 billion to R87.2 billion.

“At the outset, let me make it quite clear that while we are talking about improving discipline in government spending, we are absolutely not talking about austerity measures,” Creecy said.

Creecy said efforts were being made to ensure that available resources were spent on the key provincial priorities and not on “non-core activities or wastage”.

“Our investment in infrastructure will be accompanied by doubling of our efforts to eliminate wasteful expenditure which generally happens as a result of cost escalation, project scope changes, lack of planning and weak project management,” Creecy said.

Last month, Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene outlined budget cuts across the three spheres of government.

Gauteng would contribute R1.3 billion over the next three years to proposed budget reductions.