Finance and Economic Opportunities

The Provincial Treasury follows a holistic, proactive and integrated approach to provincial audit outcomes that is aligned to national and provincial government strategic objectives and responsive to current provincial governance challenges and risks. It focuses on embedding good governance practices that enable improved provincial performance and improved audit outcomes, and ensures that challenges identified during the PFMA audit cycles are prioritised and addressed to prevent the re-occurrence of these challenges and to improve provincial financial health and service delivery.

1. The main contributor to the unwanted expenditure including irregular and Fruitless and Wasteful expenditure was non-compliance relating to procurement. However, much of the irregular and fruitless and wasteful expenditure emanates from a difference of opinion between the government institutions and the auditors, and these matters have been escalated to National Treasury to adjudicate these differences of opinion. Provincial Treasury is driving the Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanism so that any disagreements can be handled following nationally approved policies and procedures; this will result in a further reduction in irregular expenditures, as the WCG strives to follow the rule of law. 

2. The total audited WC expenditure for 2018/19 was R63.083, and irregular expenditure in 2018/19 there represents a total of 0.04% across 14 departments inclusive of parliament, and 10 entities.

Irregular, unauthorised, fruitless and wasteful expenditure incurred by Departments

Irregular, unauthorised, fruitless and wasteful expenditure incurred by Public Entities

All the irregular expenditure will go through a process of condonation to ensure accurate and transparent reporting.

It should also be noted that many of the reported irregular / Fruitless and Wasteful expenditure are instances of non-compliance and not fraud related secondly, the AGSA, in their audit report has not reported on any fraud and corruption in relation to the reported unwanted expenditures.

Western Cape Government’s performance in context.

As recorded in the Auditor General’s PMFA audit outcome reports for 2014/15, 2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19, please see below provincial breakdowns:

The Western Cape Government and its entities’ contribution to the total provincial irregular expenditure across South Africa from 2014/15 to 2018/19 amounted to 0.15% in 2018/19.

The Western Cape Government (including all of its entities) is the only provincial government that managed to have no unauthorised expenditure for the relevant years (2014/15-2018/19).