President Cyril Ramaphosa has agreed to establish a committee between the presidency and the National Treasury to identify wasteful, inefficient and underperforming spending programmes.
Tabling budget 3.0 in the National Assembly on Wednesday, finance minister Enoch Godongwana told MPs that the National Treasury had found government could achieve “potential savings” of up to R37.5bn by improving oversight and introducing changes to spending programmes.
The finance minister also indicated that the National Treasury had conducted an expenditure review on more than R300bn of government spending since 2013 to identify waste and inefficiencies.
“Going forward, underperforming programmes will be closed as the 2026 MTEF budget process undergoes redesign,” said Godongwana.
“New reforms will target infrastructure planning and implementation across provinces and municipalities. A data-driven approach on detecting payroll irregularities will replace the more costly method of using censuses. These initiatives cross-reference administrative data sets to identify ghost workers and other anomalies across government departments.”
The spending review was a source of intense discussions between the ANC and the DA at the height of clashes over the two previous budgets — the one that was postponed at the last minute in February, and the following one that was presented in March but was subject to a legal challenge.
The DA, during negotiations for it to lend support to the budget, had demanded that its MP, Ashor Sarupen, one of the two deputy finance ministers, be appointed co-chair of the committee it proposed on the spending review.
With the committee now due to be set up by Ramaphosa, it’s not yet clear who will lead from both the presidency and Treasury.
During a pre-budget briefing on Wednesday, Sarupen ducked questions on the matter, saying all parties would be invited to make submissions to the mooted spending review committee.
Godongwana, in the same pre-budget presentation briefing, indicated that a political party he did not name had already submitted that the spending review could save government up to R100bn by eliminating wastage.
“Sustained political backing at the highest levels is needed to overcome departmental resistance and to protect whistle-blowers who expose irregularities and wastage. I am happy to say this political backing has already come from Ramaphosa, deputy president Paul Mashatile as well as my cabinet colleagues. The president has also undertaken to establish a committee between the presidency and Treasury to identify wasteful, inefficient and underperforming programmes.
“I call on ministers, MECs, DGs, HoDs and every official responsible for public funds to embrace these efforts and play their part.”
DA spokesperson on finance Mark Burke said they welcomed the spending review, adding it “must eliminate all unproductive and wasteful spending of public money”.
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