Deputy Speaker, Deputy President, this year saw National Treasury intervening in a number of provinces to address financial mismanagement, which seriously undermined service delivery. While the ACDP fully supports these interventions, particularly in Limpopo, the question that arises is how these provinces were allowed to reach these shocking levels of mismanagement. Deputy Minister, were there no early warning signals and what lessons have been learnt from these interventions? For example, how does one deal with persistent overspending on personnel, which reduces funds available for infrastructure and service delivery? Surely rules should be in place to prevent appointments being made without proper budgeting. Clearly, financial management in provinces must be considerably improved, with the best persons available being employed as managers regardless of their political party affiliation.
The ACDP also shares the concerns about municipalities and provinces not being able to spend their capital budgets. While we appreciate that the National Treasury will continue to build capacity with the Infrastructure Delivery Improvement Programme, clearly much more needs to be done in this regard. We note that municipalities, which are meant to generate their own working capital from rates and levies, are acquiring a bigger share of national revenue - R77 billion, which is well up from last year's R68 billion. Financial management at municipal levels must similarly be addressed because this is where basic service delivery occurs.
In this regard, Deputy Minister, what progress is being made to establish internal audits at municipalities? In our view, it appears highly unlikely that all municipalities will reach the target of unqualified audits by 2014. It is also apparent that long-term remedial action is required across the board to improve financial management and address wayward spending patterns.
In conclusion, however, the ACDP wishes to commend the Minister and National Treasury for the initiatives already in place to begin addressing the concerns we have raised. Therefore we will support the Division of Revenue Bill. [Applause.]