The Portfolio Committee made the following observations: 6.1 The Committee welcomed the new vision of the Department which is in line with the priorities of government, particularly the shifting of emphasis to ensure that SOCs drive investment, growth and employment. 6.2 The Committee noted the important task of state-owned companies, such as Transnet and Eskom, of driving the infrastructure build programme, and further noted that the Department needs to ensure that these companies have the capacity and resources to deliver the projects successfully. 6.3 The Committee noted the developmental role of SOCs of advancing socio-economic transformation through job creation, skills development, beneficiation and the support for small and medium enterprises. 6.4 The committee complemented the Department for the efforts of advancing transformation in the Department and in the boards and management of SOCs, particularly the employment of young people. 6.5 The Committee noted with concern the continuously declining budget of the Department, that in reality the department has been allocated less than R200 million and less than the allocation it received last year (as R1,05 billion of their total budget is earmarked for transfers to Denel and Alexkor). 6.6 The department's budget for the 2012/13 financial year will be inadequate to address challenges faced by the department, especially on human resource capacity, which is expected to oversee more than R800 billion of the infrastructure build programme (R300 billion for Transnet and R500 billion for Eskom respectively). 6.7 The Committee recognised the challenge of the department to recruit specialist and technical skills required due to the competitive remuneration packages offered by the private sector. 6.8 The Committee raised concern about the absence of legislation that empowers the department to act against non-compliance by SOCs and enforce priorities of government. It anticipates that the outcomes of the Presidential Review Committee would address this problem. 6.9 The department has obtained a clean audit for seven consecutive years and there was a need to ensure that this performance was sustained and improved.