Madam Deputy Speaker, I want to thank the ANC for the extra one minute that they have given me to speak, otherwise the division of speaking time in this Division of Revenue Bill would have left a lot to be desired.
Having said that, as the IFP, we will support this Bill in so far as the recommendations contained in it are concerned. I want to concur with the previous speaker that, as Parliament, we are failing ourselves when it comes to capacitating ourselves to deal with budgets. We should have a budget office up and running but it does not exist. We should have more staff assigned to the Appropriations committee to deal with the budgets, but that does not exit either. I hope that this matter will be addressed sooner rather than later, otherwise what happens is that this becomes a Budget of the Cabinet and the executive, and not a Budget of this Parliament. Yet the Act provides that we as parliamentarians should have a say in the Budget and proposed amendments.
Having said that, one of our concerns is the underspending of conditional grants. We believe that there is not enough centralised monitoring and evaluation over conditional grants that are given either to provinces or to municipalities. There is a lot of underspending by municipalities. For example, the department of local government has a budget of R47 billion. Of that, R46 billion is for transfers and subsidies. Yet when we met them they didn't have much of a clue about how those monies were being spent at grass- roots level. There has to be effective control and a holistic system at Treasury to ensure that this money is effectively utilised on the ground.
We want to welcome the Section 100 interventions in many of the municipalities and we compliment the Treasury and the Ministry of Finance for being brave enough to go in there and do whatever they had to do. To that end, eThekwini Municipality is also one of the municipalities that, in terms of the Division of Revenue Act, receives a lot of money from this national Budget. Yet we know from media reports and from what is called the Manase report that there are a lot of shenanigans - if I may use that word - taking place within the eThekwini Municipality.
Hon Deputy Minister, we made an appeal to the Minister for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Cogta, during statement time in this House, that the Manase report should be released to this House because we have an interest in it. Money appropriated from here goes down to eThekwini and any other municipality, for that matter. Deputy Minister, I hope that this appeal to you will not fall on deaf ears and that the Manase report will be made available to us as Members of Parliament, so that we can see what is going wrong in the Durban area.
The Department of Health expressed to us the major concerns they had with provinces and the hospital grants. We need to assist the Department of Health and other government departments to ensure that the money is spent properly at the lower levels. I see my time is up. Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. We will support the Bill. [Applause.]