Chairperson, as we have heard, the Division of Revenue Bill determines the equitable division of nationally raised revenue among the three spheres of government. Now, whilst that may be so, the biggest challenge that we have in government is underspending and the inefficient use of available resources. This is why I agreed with the National Treasury when they came to our committee and said that they emphasised the need to prioritise the attainment of efficiencies in resource allocation to strengthen delivery. If we look at all the service delivery protests that are taking place around the country, and if we look at the fact that many provincial departments are still under administration by National Treasury and national government, hon Deputy Minister, this is cause for concern.
I want to submit that South Africa is awash with money. It is like an ATM for the departments, but they are not using that money properly. This is due to the reasons that hon Ramatlakane mentioned, namely corruption, misuse, mismanagement, use of consultants and so on and so forth.
It is a pity that we couldn't propose any amendments to this Bill. That was due to the tight timeframes that are contained in the Money Bills Amendment Procedure and Related Matters Act. Hopefully as that Act is reviewed and amended, it will allow us as parliamentarians more time to interrogate the budgets that come through from Treasury. To a large extent, this is still a budget presented by Treasury, on which we in Parliament can make a few comments and at the end of the day adopt.
However, when we look at the new Money Bills Amendment Procedure and Related Matters Act, and at the National Development Plan, NDP, and the future vision of the NDP, one will have to admit that there needs to be a whole review of the cycle that Treasury uses in determining budgets. Members of Parliament need to get involved at a much earlier stage if we are to make meaningful comments.
When we talk about underspending and prioritising, a case in point is the rural housing infrastructure grant. Rural development has been identified as one of the country's major priorities. I agree with that; in fact, we all agree with that. But is this just lip service? There is a lot of money that has been allocated to this function. At first it was given to the Department of Water and Environmental Affairs in 2007, then it was moved to the Department of Human Settlements in 2009. There was massive underspending, and now we want to move it directly to municipalities. Is that going to solve the problem?
Having said that, one of the amendments that we would have liked to propose is that it should not have been moved from Schedule 6(b) to 5(b); this should not have been a direct grant. We still feel it is necessary for the national department to oversee spending in the municipalities. It becomes one big merry-go-round when you start shifting responsibilities for the spending of funds. I think Treasury needs to look at this. In the case of the municipal water infrastructure grant, which is a new grant, the responsibility resides with the Department of Water Affairs nationally, but in the case of the rural housing infrastructure grant it's with the municipalities. One can't understand what informs this kind of thinking where one function is handled by a national department and the other by a municipality.
There is a similar problem regarding the programmes of the municipal water infrastructure grant, with R4,3 billion over three years. The problem is that when we asked for a breakdown of how that money was going to be spent, over R400 million was not accounted for, and when we asked what it was for they said that 10% was, the management fee. What is this management fee? Are we going back to the old mindset of consultants? We should not have such large management fees, because these projects should be managed by public servants. We will support the Bill. [Time expired.]