NELSPRUIT – The budget and finance committee overseeing the activities of the Provincial Department of Health has mixed feelings about its performance. MEC for finance, Mr Madala Masuku, briefed the media on the province’s first-quarter finances on Wednesday.
“The department of health’s accruals are too huge to manage,” Masuku said. “But we are happy with its spending in the first quarter and that gives us room to negotiate with treasury to get back some of the withheld funds.”
The department forfeited R105,9 million of its past budget due to its non-commitment of funds in the 2012/13 financial year. Out of the total of R359,6 million available to the hospital revitalisation grant, R118,8 million went unspent. The ongoing revitalisation project has partially broken down since contractors went unpaid and one had left the site.
Masuku said the project was moving too slowly. He added that the department spent 28% of its infrastructure budget in the first quarter, above the target of 25%, “This is good since the numbers can be used as leverage when negotiating with treasury over withheld funds,” Masuku said.
Overall, the department spent 24,7% of its total budget. On the other hand, the Department of Human Settlements has spent only 9% of its total budget. Masuku attributed this to its accruals.
“I am worried that their accruals affected their performance, but we have pushed them to start spending. I think they will be able to recover.”
He said the legislature’s total accruals amounted to R658 million and blamed this trend on the departments generally not meeting the target of spending a quarter of their budgets in a quarter. “We are assisting them to help decrease their accruals,” he said.
Only the departments of economic development and safety and security have spent more than 25% of their budgets this year, at 27% and 38,6% respectively. Masuku added that the government had succeeded in reducing its litigation claims by R15, 8 million in less than four months.
“We appreciate and appeal to all parties in all disputes to seek ways of protecting the little resources that government has so that more people can benefit from planned service delivery programmes,” he said.
