According to National Treasury the spending for the first six months this year has increased by R26.4 billion when compared to previous year's expenditure in the same period. The adjusted amount of R6.2 billion was for salaries and housing allowances. An amount of R2.33 billion was adjusted for national government while R3.81 billion was adjusted for provincial government. Even though the 2010/11 national expenditure has improved for the first six months when compared to the 2009/10 financial year in the same period, some departments have spent less than 50 per cent of their budgets for the first six months and have submitted requests for their budgets to be adjusted due to unforeseeable and unavoidable expenditures and roll-overs. Although the Committee supports these adjustments it has noted that most of the unavoidable and unforeseeable expenditure was mainly due to the salary adjustments and housing allowances instead of policy priorities both at the national and provincial government spheres. Affected departments in this regard include Health (48.9 per cent), Water Affairs (37.7 per cent), Statistics South Africa (30.4 per cent), Trade and Industry (36.8 per cent), Rural Development (38.0 per cent), Home Affairs (35.4 per cent), Public Works (37.7 per cent), Communication (26.2 per cent) and Art and culture (44.3 per cent). The Committee is concerned about this state of affairs which is an indication of poor planning. Some of these Departments are the key pillars of the Medium Term Strategic Framework of government Priorities.