We can't spend and spend to recover money lost to corruption: Nene

Treasury is reluctant to throw good money after bad by over-committing funds to recover state money lost to corruption, Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene said on Thursday.

"I'm not too sure whether as a country we should be focusing on building capacity on collecting money that we lose as a result of corruption, or we should be closing the leakage as a result of corruption," Nene told the standing and joint committees on finance and appropriations.

"It is like when there are issues with security, where security becomes lucrative business. Is it going to be lucrative business also for us to invest money in how we recover the money that we lost as a result of corruption?"

Nene said he agreed with pleas from the opposition that the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) should be adequately resourced, but added that recovery processes could become costly in themselves.

"Indeed, these structures like the SIU need to be given the capacity, but I don't think we can afford putting in all our resources because we want to recover."

Illustrating the point, he recalled recent media reports that the State Information and Technology Agency spent R10 million to recover three laptops stolen from its premises in Centurion, Pretoria.

"As we have seen... some of these processes don't take as short a route as we think they are going to, and I don't think there would ever be adequate resources."

Nene was responding to broad criticism from opposition parties that plans to cut back on expenditure growth, announced in his medium-term budget tabled on Wednesday, were woefully inadequate given SIU estimates that the state lost an average R30 billion annually through graft and wasteful expenditure.

In his medium-term budget policy statement, Nene indicated that the budget for the public protector would be increased in coming years, but gave no further detail.

This follows repeated submissions from Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, who warned in her office's annual report to Parliament that its functioning was hampered by a lack of funding.

On Wednesday, just before Nene tabled his medium-term budget, she was accused by the chairman of Parliament's justice committee, Mathole Motshekga, of failing to manage her budget or her staff properly.