Madam Deputy Speaker, the Acting President, and colleagues. Let me also join the House in offering my condolences to the Slabbert family. I met Van Zyl Slabbert in the early 80s when I was on the other side of the political line. I can only commend his impeccable integrity and resilience. [Interjections.] No, you will learn about it soon, don't worry.
On behalf of the Minister's committee on the Budget and indeed the Cabinet, I want to thank and extend our appreciation to the Standing Committee on Appropriations and its chairperson, Mr Sogoni, and indeed all Members of Parliament who have participated through the various portfolio committees in interrogating the Appropriation Bill.
This is a new period during which a new, critical look had to be given to the Division of Revenue, to the Fiscal Framework and the proposed allocations to the various departments. Of course, all of the committees heard what the departments were delivering, but all of them also heard how each of the departments wants more money. Of course, the amounts will range from anything up to a billion rand as we have learnt. May I thank, on behalf of Cabinet, Parliament for its vigilance and very constructive debate and contributions to a very important process.
This year, Deputy Speaker, is an interesting year. It marks the first time we have implemented the Money Bills Amendment Procedure and Related Matters Act. We did so in the middle of a serious recession which, every now and then, seems to tell us it's going away, but then decides to come back.
We have had to move into a deficit of 7,3% to secure our expenditure on infrastructure, social commitment and other commitments in terms of spending programmes. We have put in place measures to mitigate the impact of this recession on workers and businesses. Also, we have conducted an internal campaign - like many governments are doing now - to encourage savings, to find value-for-money propositions and, more importantly, to get a collective voice amongst us in our fight against corruption and the virulent rent-seeking that seems to typify our society.
We must endorse Mr Sogoni's words when he says these are public funds and there is a lot more that politicians, administrative heads and others could do to make sure that we get the right value for money.
In the last three days we have had some good news. Two days ago the Reserve bank informed us that the leading indicators - these are indicators that they monitor in the economy that tell us if the curve is moving up or down, or just straight are showing that we are increasingly moving away from the recession that we've been experiencing.
Yesterday we heard from Statistics SA that our GDP for the first quarter was 4,6% and today we heard from them again that the Consumer Price Index, CPI, came out at 4,8% - much below what many people expected. [Applause.]
I think we should rightly be happy that South Africa appears to have left the recession behind; it certainly has. But when we look at the world around us, we also have to be mindful that there are still risks in the world around us. As I will illustrate to you in a moment, we are not completely in a clear. Remember that the recession that we experienced in South Africa wasn't of our own making. It was the greed and avarice of bankers in Wall Street that got us what the rest of the world had got itself into.
At the same time, we must appreciate the good news, but the key challenge before us is how to increase the volume of this good news into a roar which says we are, indeed, on the path of an inclusive growth economy. The warning for us, though, is that most of the world or many parts of the world are on what we may call a fiscal watch.
Let me give you some examples of what this fiscal watch means. The United Kingdom, UK, announced the other day - you might agree or disagree with the current coalition administration - that they are going to cut 6,25 billion in this year's budget. A sum of 1 billion is to be cut in discretionary areas like consultancy and travel costs; 95 million by cutting losts in IT spending; 1,7 billion by delaying and stopping contracts and projects; 170 million through reductions and property costs; 600 million from cutting the costs of quangos, or what we call state entities; and another 520 million by reducing other lower-value spending.
Local government must make a contribution of 1,1 billion to this overall 6 billion and over.