Forget frills, collect the money - Gordhan

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan

He warns that officials and ministers need to "ease up on the gravy" so that the national fiscus could weather the global economic storms facing South Africa. He says that municipalities must do more to improve the quality of spending, cut down on waste and focus on delivering better services.

He also criticised ratepayers' associations for withholding rates and fees in protest over poor service delivery.
Gordhan says that the National Treasury aims to work with municipalities to develop strategies that will improve debt collection. Municipalities in South Africa are owed more than R62-billion, an increase of 10% since December last year.
He says that much of the debt is older than 90-days making it significantly more difficult to collect. He conceded that much of the older debt would have to be written off by municipalities.

Read more:

• Summary: Local Government Budgets and Spending Review.
  
• The Expenditure Review.
  
• Read the Times Live article.
  
• Read the IOL article.