Northern Cape Budget 2023: Province to Open Fiscal Year with a Deficit
Andrew Louw
ActionSA North-West Provincial Chairperson
The Northern Cape Province, under the poor leadership of the ANC, is starting the year with a R150 million deficit for the 2023/2024 financial year.
It is no surprise that the service delivery has been comprised and the communities are boycotting and taking the law into their own hands. The MEC for Finance, Economic Development and Tourism, Mr Vosloo, in his budget speech vaguely refers to the audit outcomes. As ActionSA we see this as merely a box-ticking exercise without any real and meaningful engagement of the systemic issues that have led to the precarious financial situation in which the province currently finds itself.
With so many complaints relating to service delivery, the Premier is dead silent on how he and his team will deal with this because no monitoring and evaluation has occurred thus far. The MEC promised to support municipalities, forgetting the reason why the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) was created in the first place- to ensure the efficacy of the management of the public purse to support the provision of services to residents in municipalities across the province.
The Premier in his State of the Province Address (SoPA) boasted about ushering in the digital age for the Province which is a good idea but does not address the immediate issues facing the province which cannot wait for a “digital revolution” which will take a considerable amount of time to come to fruition.
This is again proof that the ANC government is trying to get away with hollow words but no action, but ActionSA will hold them to account.
In his speech MEC Vosloo mentioned that the Northern Cape has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, as ActionSA we beg to differ in that this is arguably one of the most unequal provinces in the country.
The budget speech was full of promises but we have seen this movie before. We will monitor the empty promises very closely and how they intend to execute them.
Northern Cape Budget 2023: Province to Open Fiscal Year with a Deficit
The Northern Cape Province, under the poor leadership of the ANC, is starting the year with a R150 million deficit for the 2023/2024 financial year.
It is no surprise that the service delivery has been comprised and the communities are boycotting and taking the law into their own hands. The MEC for Finance, Economic Development and Tourism, Mr Vosloo, in his budget speech vaguely refers to the audit outcomes. As ActionSA we see this as merely a box-ticking exercise without any real and meaningful engagement of the systemic issues that have led to the precarious financial situation in which the province currently finds itself.
With so many complaints relating to service delivery, the Premier is dead silent on how he and his team will deal with this because no monitoring and evaluation has occurred thus far. The MEC promised to support municipalities, forgetting the reason why the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) was created in the first place- to ensure the efficacy of the management of the public purse to support the provision of services to residents in municipalities across the province.
The Premier in his State of the Province Address (SoPA) boasted about ushering in the digital age for the Province which is a good idea but does not address the immediate issues facing the province which cannot wait for a “digital revolution” which will take a considerable amount of time to come to fruition.
This is again proof that the ANC government is trying to get away with hollow words but no action, but ActionSA will hold them to account.
In his speech MEC Vosloo mentioned that the Northern Cape has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, as ActionSA we beg to differ in that this is arguably one of the most unequal provinces in the country.
The budget speech was full of promises but we have seen this movie before. We will monitor the empty promises very closely and how they intend to execute them.