House Chair and hon members, despite the tough fiscal environment of stagnant economic growth, it is the responsibility of this House as it comes to this Division of Revenue Amendment Bill, to ensure that reductions in the budget related more to curbing the rate which budgets were growing rather than on cutting on essential expenditure. By this I mean we want to highlight that we are still not happy or we are concerned about the cutting of the important grants such as the basic school infrastructure grant, which are important for the infrastructure needs of the different schools around the country.
Much has been said about the failure of municipalities to pay their Eskom debt over the past few months without looking at the
picture holistically. Yes, some of the smaller municipalities are their own worse enemies sometimes. Many poor municipalities are bloated ... [Inaudible.] ... as a result, funds originally earmarked for service delivery end up being used for compensation of employees. In addition, it is concerning that despite capacity support programmes to some of these municipalities extended by government over the years, they still plead a lack of capacity as a result there are number of underexpenditure on grants and poor performance on issues.
On the flip side of the coin, this House has to deal with the debt that many municipalities are owed by government departments. During his 2018 Budget Speech in the National Assembly the Minister of Finance said that the failure by government to pay municipalities for services rendered threat to municipal financial stability and made a commitment to remedy the situation. However, more than a year after the statement was made national and provincial government departments still owes some of the country's struggling municipalities over R9 billion as you are aware.
In the very same speech, the Minister stated that National Treasury director-general had instructed that all government departments and public institutions to pay suppliers on time or be
charged with financial conduct. Despite this instruction - as you are aware - national and provincial departments currently owes South African small businesses over R7,1 billion in unpaid invoices older than 30 days.
I am not sure how this government then intends to achieve its gross targets given the fact that small businesses are an important engine for economic growth. House Chair, we want to repeat a point we made while we were on the election campaign trail that the dire nature of the country's finances requires the development of fiscal rules. The fiscal rules will help us to impose a long lasting constraint on fiscal policy through numerical limits on budgetary aggregates. These rules entail budget balance rules, debt rules, expenditure rules and revenue rules. Furthermore, through these rules we will also be able to develop fiscal responsibility laws, independent monitoring bodies as well as law enforcement procedures. I cannot over emphasise the importance of these step.
The consequences of us leaving this important task of ensuring intergenerational fiscal equity to the political wing of government ... [Time expired.] ... are too ghastly to contemplate.
IsiXhosa:
Siyabulela. Oowu mama uyalingxamela eli xesha xa indim kodwa ubumncedile la mfana ebe lapha phambi kwam.
USIHLALO WENDLU (Nks M G Boroto): Hayi kudala kubomvu apho kuwe, nawe ndikuncedile. Suka apho. [Kwahlekwa.]