POLOKWANE, SOUTH AFRICA SEPTEMBER 19: Limpopo Premier Stan Mathabatha (far left) and Polly Boshielo during the NCOP findings on different government department debriefing meeting on September 19, 2016 in Polokwane, South Africa. The NCOP delegation produced a draft report on observations and findings in different government entities in the province. (Photo by Gallo Images / Sowetan / Sandile Ndlovu)
Limpopo, E-Cape governments spend more than 60% of their budgets on salaries. Report
Of all nine provinces, the Western Cape government spends the least of its budget on its employees.
POLOKWANE, SOUTH AFRICA SEPTEMBER 19: Limpopo Premier Stan Mathabatha (far left) and Polly Boshielo during the NCOP findings on different government department debriefing meeting on September 19, 2016 in Polokwane, South Africa. The NCOP delegation produced a draft report on observations and findings in different government entities in the province. (Photo by Gallo Images / Sowetan / Sandile Ndlovu)
New data shows that all nine of South Africa’s provinces spend more than half of their budgets on paying staff, with some provinces splashing out almost 70% before they’ve even begun setting money aside for service delivery.
National Treasury’s fourth-quarter provincial budgets and expenditure report paints a pretty bleak picture of the state that South Africa’s provincial governments are in, in terms of where the money’s going.
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The report, released on Tuesday, shows that the Limpopo provincial government spends a whopping 69.3% of its total annual budget on salaries, before a cent has been spent on service delivery.
Coming in second is the Eastern Cape with 63.4% and KZN with 59.5%. Incidentally, both Limpopo and the Eastern Cape consistently underperform in terms of service delivery to residents.
The Western Cape spent the smallest chunk of its budget, 53.1%, on salaries. In total, R311.4 billion was spent by all nine provinces on salaries in the 2016/17 financial year.
Now, while a large chunk of provincial budgets goes to paying salaries of teachers and the like, it’s interesting to see how much of each department’s budget actually goes to servicing said department.
Example: Limpopo spent the highest amount of its budget on healthcare, but only 2.2% of that went to actual capital expenditure in healthcare, the bulk went to paying healthcare workers’ salaries.
While paying salaries is important, so too should be the actual spending on delivering the services employees are paid to deliver… not so?
