First Quarter National Expenditure Report: consideration

Meeting report

Draft Committee Report on First Quarter National Expenditure
The Chairperson stated that it was very important to thoroughly go through the Report and identify key concepts that needed to be dealt with in accordance with applicable statutory provisions before the Report could be presented to Parliament. This was a new initiative in dealing with Reports.

The Committee Members suggested that the term “unauthorized expenditure” that is featured in the column on page 4 needed to be explained.

Mr Perran Hahndiek, Committee Secretary, stated that National Treasury labelled this expenditure as “unauthorized” because it was unforeseen expenditure and therefore not budgeted for.

Ms J Fubbs (ANC) advised that both the Committee’s researcher and Secretary should ask National Treasury for an indication as to what amount was spent under this expenditure and to make an inquiry as to which government departments had unauthorized expenditure.

Mr D Gumede (ANC) stated that the variations between the amounts for land rentals were far apart and that these figures needed to be closer to each other. He asked if this was the case of interest rates that were being charged irrespective of the activities taking place on such land.

The Committee members agreed that the report needed to be restructured and certain technical suggestions were proposed, including an opening introduction that summarized everything that was to follow in the report. Committee members agreed that recommendations that need to be featured in the reports were the concerns that were raised during the meeting.

The report would be considered further before being adopted.
 
The meeting was adjourned.