Hon Chairperson, hon Minister, hon members, the Constitution requires that nationally raised revenue must be evenly shared between national, provincial and local government and that this must be in line with their respective functions and fiscal competence. As we already know, these allocations, together with conditional grants to provinces and municipalities, are set out in the Division of Revenue Bill.
The ACDP would like to applaud the revenue authorities for collecting R15 billion more than the projected budget and target, with revenue estimated up to R580 billion for 2007-08.
Apart from the debt service costs and the contingency reserve, the allocated expenditure that is to be shared between the three spheres over each of the MTEF years are R552,9 billion, R618,5 billion and R673,5 billion.
The ACDP welcomes the increased allocations for provinces as there is a huge need for the improvement of education, public health care, welfare and housing programmes, as well as investment in roads, economic projects and tourism, agriculture and job creation under the Expanded Public Works Programme.
The ACDP shares the concerns of government regarding the capacity constraints. There is a vast lack of qualified employees in this country, especially engineers. We need to train, equip and educate more engineers and, in the short-term, bring back retired engineers or other skilled persons who can fill the gap.
The ACDP hopes that the public sector wage agreement and the occupation- specific dispensations for educators, social workers and nurses will attract and retain personnel in those sectors.
Additionally, the ACDP notes that there has been an increase in health personnel of 39 600 over the past four years and that a further 25 000 posts will be filled by 2010, which we are very happy with.
Provinces will also spend R18 billion over three years on school infrastructure and equipment - and we pray that this will go a long way to eliminating unsafe schools.
The ACDP trusts that these added allocations will allow municipalities to improve and speed up service delivery and to position host cities to meet obligations of the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Finally, the ACDP shares the sentiment of the hon Minister that we are in this together and that we have a responsibility to ensure that the allocated funds attain the stated goals. The ACDP supports this Bill. [Applause.]