Speaker, hon members, comrades and compatriots, the ANC welcomes the 2012-13 Division of Revenue Bill, Bill No 4 of 2012, tabled by hon Pravin Gordhan, the Minister of Finance, who has boldly steered the ship in these stormy economic waters.
This Budget was delivered in the context of what the President said when he issued the orders by which to achieve the policy objectives of the ANC in order to defeat the triple challenge of unemployment, poverty and inequality. For the majority of South Africans, the resources provided in this Division of Revenue Bill should go a long way in eroding the triple challenge the President spoke about.
In this record Budget of a trillion rand over the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF, the ANC-led government is making a bold statement of intention to deliver on the commitments we made in the 2009 manifesto to create jobs and improve public infrastructure and service delivery. Though we are living in challenging times in terms of the global economic outlook, our country continues to experience growth - small as it may be - thus resulting in the average growth of the Budget of 8,2%, though slower than the period between 2008-09 to 2010-11 period, when the Budget was growing by 11,1%.
The challenge facing our government at all levels is to achieve more efficiently and economically with these limited resources. This also challenges us as Parliament to improve on oversight.
This Division of Revenue Bill introduces new grants intended to build capacity to deliver efficiently and on time: one, the schools infrastructure backlog grant, implemented nationally; and, two, the infrastructure skills development grant, which is to be administered by National Treasury and is intended to support municipalities to create a long-term and sustainable pool of young professionals with technical and operational skills through deploying graduate engineers and scientists as interns in municipalities.
Furthermore, the Bill introduced the provincial disaster grants for the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, which is intended proactively to respond to immediate needs after a disaster has occurred; and the devolution of the property rates funds grant, administered by the national Department of Public Works to enable provinces to pay rates. During the hearings the SA Local Government Association, Salga, informed the Standing Committee on Appropriations that some national and provincial departments were not paying for services. We are aware that the provinces also feel that the billing system is not accurate and that poses a challenge between the departments and the municipalities.
Further, the Expanded Public Works Programme is a huge grant as it is now also extended to include the social sector. Properly implemented, it has huge potential to absorb a lot of unemployed people - though the challenge, according to Salga, is allowances that vary from province to province. Salga informed us that the Western Cape was paying less in some areas and even within the Western Cape they were not paying the same amounts. These amounts are gazetted in the Public Works ...
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