Gordhan warns against wasteful expenditure

The accountant-general is mulling changes to public finance laws to punish directors-general whose departments are found culpable of wasteful expenditure, says Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

Addressing a media briefing in parliament ahead of his medium-term budget speech today, Gordhan said public servants and accounting officers needed to look at inefficiencies and money wastage “a lot more strongly”.

Auditor-general Terrence Nombembe found this year that irregular expenditure by government departments had increased by an average of 62%, with fruitless and wasteful expenditure shooting up by 200%.

Gordhan said he hoped government departments would cut this out “voluntarily”.

But if they did not, the accountant-general’s office was “currently working on finding out whether amendments to the Public Finance Management Act are needed to hold accounting officers more accountable … some further sanction beyond what we have”, Gordhan added.

Under the Public Finance Management Act, financial misconduct is grounds for dismissal.

But this is rarely put into force. Last year, when departments splurged R110-million on Soccer World Cup tickets and t-shirts, Gordhan warned that this might be deemed wasteful expenditure by Nombembe.

He issued a call then “for civil servants to live up to their moral contract with citizens and for restraint and discernment to be exercised in the use of public funds”.

“We need an understanding that South Africa is not a rich country, that we need to exercise appropriate levels of caution and be aware that there is a huge imbalance between the demands of our past and our present. Irregular and wasteful expenditure is really not what we require,” he said today.