House Chair, hon Deputy President, hon members, in 1987, in his January 8 Statement, the late ANC president Oliver Tambo said:
We must proceed from the position that our task is to win a revolution. Political revolutions are about the capture of state power and its use to advance the objectives of fundamental social transformation. This task must be carried out consciously and intentionally by the revolutionary forces to bring about profound change in favour of the social classes and strata that have gained power. Without the victory of the revolution, revolutionary changes are not possible. The state is a vital feature in an effort to bring about those revolutionary changes, because a new society cannot be built within the existing framework. Hence we'll see the opposition's attack on our progress as we incrementally achieve the revolutionary state that was envisaged.
It is critical that we bear this in mind at all times when addressing budgets as tools of transformation.
The Budget and Division of Revenue Bill allocate resources to give effect to the ANC's objectives and policies, ensuring that the state's resources are allocated in a manner that systematically and incrementally transform the state and concretise the people's contract for a better life for all. The Bill, in our opinion, achieves these objectives in the 2010-11 financial year and beyond.
As an activist Parliament, it's our responsibility to transform the budget process into one that will culminate in an activist budget, using organs of people's power to achieve this. The Money Bills Amendment Procedure and Related Matters Act is a mechanism through which this can be achieved. It is our responsibility to begin engaging our people around the provisions in the Act and how these will be phased in over time.
Furthermore, the Act is an instrument that sets out a legal framework that gives a voice to the voiceless in determining how resources should be allocated amongst the various spheres of government. As public representatives, it's our collective responsibility to ensure that all sectors of society are mobilised into organised constituencies.
In forming partnerships with the people and to give meaningful expression to the notion of partnership, we as Parliament must ensure that we strengthen our interaction with the organs of the people's power that this very House, through legislation, gave effect to, namely school governing bodies, SGBs; community policing forums, CPFs; ward committees; hospital boards; clinic committees etc. These organs of the people's power can play a significant role in assisting in the budgeting, monitoring and evaluation process, in turn accelerating the implementation of the five key areas of government. Our people must be involved in the planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation of services delivered to them as they are direct beneficiaries of these services. As such their participation is critical in advancing the national democratic revolution.
In ensuring that the strategic objectives are met through the Division of Revenue Bill, let me emphasise the following from the Bill: The ANC government's commitment to the implementation of the five priorities demonstrates itself in the revenue allocation to provinces, as the Constitution confers concurrent powers to provinces with respect to, among other areas, education and the Expanded Public Works Programme, the EPWP, through the Department of Public Works. In that regard, equitable allocations should be made to provinces to capacitate them to contribute to their realisation of sustainable, quality public education and the creation of decent work.
Over the three-year period, provincial transfers will grow at an average annual rate of 7,7% to R369,3 billion in the 2012-13 financial year. The total transfers to provinces for the 2010-11 financial year amount to R322,9 billion, with R261 billion allocated to the provincial equitable share and R61,9 billion to conditional grants.
Part of this adjustment is meant to assist provinces in accommodating the higher-than-anticipated wage settlements and the occupation-specific dispensation, OSD, payments for Health and Education. Despite the general challenges of scarcity of skills, there tends to be a higher turnover of skills in areas such as education and health. The highest skills turnover is often attended by skills concentration in urban areas and scarcity in rural areas. The OSD implementation should therefore be expedited to enhance retention and equitable skills distribution.
The ANC has always viewed education as an instrument of both liberation from poverty and underdevelopment and an empowerment tool to ensure that skills and training required to build a prosperous and equitable national democratic society are developed and retained. Education is one of the areas that still reproduce the imbalances of the past. Interventions made in education should be to ensure quality and equity in the education system through allocations that seek to empower and support learners.
To give further effect to these objectives, the Department of Basic Education administers the National Schools Nutrition Programme grant, the Dinaledi Schools grant, the Technical Secondary Schools Recapitalisation grant and the HIV/Aids Skills Education grant. As a result of the split in the education Ministry and the formation of the new Department of Higher Education and Training, the further education and training, FET, colleges grant is introduced to protect current spending on these colleges by provinces while the legislative processes required to shift this function to national government are completed.
Total expenditure on further education and training colleges was taken out of the equitable share and shifted into this conditional grant. The grant amounts to R11,9 billion over the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework period. It should be noted that the Department is to encourage FET colleges to develop courses that will be utilised by the various sector education and training authorities, Setas, for training purposes, thus creating revenue flows for the FETs and improving sustainable job opportunities for the participants.
Unlike the opposition parties, the ANC is planning ahead; it's putting processes in place that will concretise our ability to deliver on our election manifesto.
Phase two of the Expanded Public Works Programme aims to create 4,5 million short-term jobs nationally that will last for 100 days. The effect of job opportunities which are created through the public works programme is not only poverty alleviation and skills transfer but the possibility of subsequent permanency in some of the jobs offered. The EPWP incentive grant to provinces for the infrastructure sector provides incentives to provinces and municipalities to increase spending on labour-intensive programmes.
The 2010 Budget introduces a new grant on the Public Works Vote, namely the Expanded Public Works Programme grant for the social sector. This grant receives R57 million in 2010-11 to subsidise nonprofit organisations that have been using the services of unpaid volunteers so that these volunteers can receive some form of remuneration. During 2010 a comprehensive funding model for a programme that will incentivise labour-intensive employment in the sector and inform grant allocations for 2011-12 and 2013 will be developed.
Municipalities play a critical role in furthering the ANC's policy objectives of providing services to all while facilitating local economic development. Over the next three years, national transfers to local government will grow to accelerate the delivery of basic services to households that cannot afford them. In line with the ANC policies, government is accelerating efforts to assist municipalities in improving service delivery capacity.
The 2010 MTEF will see an additional R10,3 billion allocated to the local government sphere, of which R6,7 billion is in respect of the local government equitable share to ensure conditional expansion of access to basic services, and to assist municipalities in dealing with increases in the cost of purchasing bulk electricity. The remainder of the R10,3 billion will be allocated to the infrastructure grants. [Interjections.] After 30 years, hon Mike, I thought you would've had enough.
It is recognised that economic disparities do exist between and within provinces and municipalities, and that provinces and municipalities have different demographic and economic profiles, and markedly different levels of economic development. The equitable share formulae are therefore redistributive, and in particular, allocations have been increased to invest in economic infrastructure like roads, social infrastructure and schools in order to accelerate economic growth and job creation.
The extent of interventions needs to differ among provinces and among municipalities, mainly due to the disproportionate development strategies of the apartheid era. The priorities of successive ANC-led governments over the years have sought to ensure that social and economic deficits inherited from the apartheid era are addressed.
It is in light of the above that we, as the ANC, are confident that the Division of Revenue Bill will give effect to the strategic objectives of government. Thank you. [Applause.]