Hon Chairperson, the National Development Plan, NDP, is our roadmap to the future of a society with more jobs and less poverty. And yet, two years after Parliament, Cabinet and broad sections of civil society endorsed the plan, we seem to be stuck on the side of the road.
We hear about the implementation of the NDP, but we do not see it. Why? The roadmap is not the problem, the problem is that we have no-one behind the steering wheel. Instead, we have backseat drivers in the form of Cosatu and the SACP. They want to steer us on another course - the course of the national democratic revolution, NDR.
The NDR is the path of more state intervention, economic decay and unemployment.
The NDP is the path of greater freedom, growth and jobs. Last month, in the debate on the state of the nation address, hon Minister Radebe said, and I quote:
Capacity is being created in the Presidency to carry out thorough socioeconomic impact assessments of both new and existing legislation and regulations, in order to ensure alignment with the NDP and reduce the risk of unintended consequences.
Two weeks later, the President signed into law the Property Valuation Bill and the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill. Both these laws contradict the NDP. They disregard the roadmap and take us down a dead end.
We know exactly what the consequences of these laws will be. Like the new immigration regulations, they will reduce economic growth, increase unemployment, scare off foreign investment and create policy uncertainty.
The Presidency sits at the apex of government. It is responsible for policy coherence. So the hon Minister and Deputy Minister have a very important role to play. They must assert the NDP's supremacy as an overriding policy blueprint. They must stare down opposition to the plan from the ruling party's alliance partners or the NDP will fail, and this budget will go to waste.
Because Budget Vote No 6 is so crucial to the realisation of the National Development Plan, we must prioritise its allocations accordingly.
For 2014-15, the National Youth Development Agency, NYDA, has been allocated R408 million. This is three-and-a-half times more than the allocation to the National Planning Commission Secretariat of R113 million, and is nearly double the allocation of R208 million to the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. This makes no sense whatsoever.
The NYDA has a history of fraud, corruption and irregular and wasteful expenditure. It is pathologically profligate and yet every year we entrust it with more public funds.
The chairperson of the NYDA claims to have embarked on a turnaround strategy. He says the agency's vision is to deliver "as many opportunities as is possible with our available resources to the youth of South Africa".
Yet the NYDA spends R189 million of its R408 million grant on salaries alone. That is almost 50% of its "available resources" spent on feeding a bloated bureaucracy - not on providing opportunities for the youth.
The wage bill at the NYDA is almost as much as the entire allocation for the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation. It outstrips the National Planning Commission Secretariat's whole budget by some margin. Time and again, though, the NYDA has shown that it cannot be trusted with public money.
In 2013 the Auditor-General found that the agency's irregular expenditure amounted to R195 million over two years and that it was unlikely to recover R212 million in loans.
In 2010 the NYDA wasted over R100 million on a kissing competition dressed up as the World Festival of Youth. The NYDA pays lip service to youth development. We should kiss it goodbye! [Laughter.] [Applause.]
But the hon Deputy Minister wants to amend the National Youth Development Agency Act. He wants to give the agency greater powers to co-ordinate and implement youth development at a provincial level.
Hon Manamela should take a leaf out of the DA-run Western Cape government's Youth Development Strategy instead. [Interjections.] This strategy is based on the NDP. It prioritises education and training, with an innovative after- school programme and a youth service programme. It promotes economic participation, with a range of employment and internship opportunities for first-time job-seeking youth. These include the Premier's Advancement of Youth, PAY, Project and the Work and Skills Programme, a variant of the youth wage subsidy. Seventy per cent of participants have been kept on as permanent employees after completing the programme. [Interjections.]
According to the World Economic Forum Global Risks 2014 report, South Africa has the third-highest unemployment rate in the world, behind Greece and Spain, for youth between the ages of 15 and 24 years, at 50%.