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South Africa: Provinces Get Extra R36bn for Services
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Business Day (Johannesburg)
31 October 2007
Posted to the web 31 October 2007
Wyndham Hartley
Johannesburg
PROVINCIAL budget baselines are to be increased by R36bn over the next three years to help provide better education, health and social services to more people, particularly poor communities.
The baselines are the initial allocation to provinces from the central government.
The increase will take provincial spending from the revised estimate of R205bn for this financial year to R288bn in 2010-11, a growth of 11,9%.
The allocation is a combination of the equitable share formula and conditional grants.
The medium-term budget policy statement says that, "in addition to the R8bn added to provincial education budgets and the R4,2bn added to health budgets over the three years, a further R11,7bn is proposed to fund the recently concluded public sector salary agreement and to finalise an occupation-specific dispensation for educators and social workers".
Conditional grants to the provinces rise from a global R32bn this year to R46bn in 2010-11.
These grants include the infrastructure grant, the school nutritional programme, the programme to revitalise hospitals, and an agricultural disaster management grant.
A further R2,1bn is allocated to the infrastructure grant for improving schools. The government will spend R17bn over the next three years building new schools.
There was also a special transitional grant to North West of R250m to help it through difficulties experienced because of changes to provincial boundaries made in late 2005. The changes eliminated troublesome cross-border municipalities.
Residents of the Merafong municipality, which includes Khutsong, have objected to the decision, saying they prefer to remain part of Gauteng.
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Deputy Finance Minister Jabu Moleketi told a news conference that the grant to North West was to help provide health and education services to the province's now increased population.
The integrated housing and human settlements grant, which finances the government's flagship housing subsidy programme was allocated an additional R2,2bn to speed up delivery.
This will bring total spending on this grant to R35bn over the next three years.
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