Concern was raised regarding whether the proposed minor adjustments to the local government equitable share (LGES) formula to allocate more funding towards poorer municipalities are substantive enough to address institutional challenges, such as: the need to appoint skilled personnel to manage finances, human resources, service delivery functions and core administration functions. In addition, the availability of credible data on key variables relating to the socio-economic demographic and spatial profiles of municipalities needs to be addressed not only to update the data underpinning the LGES formula but also to enable a more fundamental review of the structure of the formula itself.