Chairperson, hon Ntwanambi and hon members, as hon members should know, a task team has been established by Cabinet, comprising Ministers Gordhan, Chabane and Baloyi, to investigate and identify areas where wastage and inefficient spending by government can be reduced and to present these recommendations to Cabinet. This task team has very difficult terms of reference because it must propose cost-cutting measures or savings that will not impact negatively on the economy's ability to grow and create jobs or on service delivery.
The main considerations for this cost-cutting exercise are: One, reprioritising; two, reducing wastage and inefficiency; three, eliminating corruption; and four, getting more value for each public rand spent. The task team has submitted a preliminary report to Cabinet but their work is continuing.
In general, unnecessary extras have been reduced. Specific actions and policies related to the items identified by the hon member, namely, air and ground travel, accommodation, housing, etc, will be identified in the context of this entire exercise. We are, for example, eliminating unnecessary catering; reducing official delegations to the bare minimum required; travel to Cape Town, except for top officials, and to the rest of South Africa is in economy class; and, where possible, officials seek accommodation in reasonably priced hotels.
Going forward, the task team has identified other longer-term saving possibilities, for example, revising the Ministerial handbook and other possibly wasteful and low-impact policies; and reprioritising expenditure to programmes that yield greater benefits.
The task team will continue to scrutinise departmental budgets with the aim of identifying and eliminating wastage, leakages and corruption, including the type of corruption that makes government pay more than they should for goods and services. To effect this, an interdepartmental working group has been established to strengthen compliance with the Public Finance Management Act, PFMA, as well as preventing fraud and corruption in the procurement process. There will be no sacred cows. If we need to look at the location of Parliament, we will certainly look at that as well. I thank you.