Question NW1646 to the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs

Reply:

(a) (i) The Municipal Infrastructure Grant (MIG) is administered by the Department of Cooperative Governance with the aim of developing infrastructure to provide poor households with at least a basic level of service. Municipalities have been allocated R15,6 billion in 2021/22 that is aligned to the municipal financial year that will end on 30 June 2022.

Municipalities have reported expenditure on the MIG over the last 5 years 2016/17 - 2020/21) as follows:

Financial year	Transferred	Spent by receiving municipalities	% spent against transferred
2016/17	14,914,028	13,784,509	92.40%
2017/18	15,891,252	14,545,025	91.50%
2018/19	15,287,685	13,831,893	90.48%
2019/20	14,816,103	11,720,688	79.11%
2020/21	14,491,065	13,226,723	91.28%
Total	75,400,133	67,108,838	89.00%

Disaster Grant contribution to Infrastructure Development (NDMC):

Funding allocations have been done from the Disaster Grants within the NDMC to augment resources of affected organs of state regarding infrastructure development: The funds were allocated from the Municipal Disaster Relief Grant, Provincial Disaster Relief Grant and Municipal Disaster Recovery Grant mainly in addressing the drought conditions in affected provinces and municipalities. The allocations were as follows:

Financial years	Type of grants	Amounts transferred	Purpose of allocation
2017/2018	Municipal Disaster Relief Grant	R341 373 000	Drought interventions: Infrastructure
	Provincial Disaster Relief Grant	R78 000 000
2018/2019	Municipal Disaster Recovery Grant	R 1 025 484 000
2019/2020	No disaster grant allocations
2020/2021	Provincial Disaster Relief Grant	R138 489 000
2021/2022	Municipal Disaster Relief Grant	R 173 132 000
	Provincial Disaster Relief Grant	R48 100 000
Total (infrastructure development)	R1 804 578 000

(ii) According to the MIG Framework, which stipulates the conditions under which the funds allocated to municipalities must be used, indicates that funds for the maintenance of roads must be in line with the maintenance priorities identified through the Rural Roads Asset Management System (RRAMS) administered by the Department of Transport. Although this provision has been made within the MIG no maintenance on roads maintenance has been funded form the MIG within the last 5 years.

(b) MIG receiving municipalities reported that:

- In 2019/20 MIG allocations were reprioritised in April 2020 to address Covid-19 related areas. The expenditure reported on projects was R204 million.
- In 2020/21 (period 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2022) MIG receiving municipalities reported expenditure of R609 million.

Disaster Grant allocation to Covid-19 response measures

Financial years	Type of grants	Amounts transferred	Purpose of allocation
2019/2020	Provincial Disaster Relief Grant	R 466 392 000	Covid-19 response measures
2020/2021	Municipal Disaster Relief Grant	R150 970 000
Total (Covid-19)	R617 362 000

(c)

Financial years	Type of grant	Amounts transferred	Purpose of allocation
2016/2017	No disaster grant allocations
2017/2018	Municipal Disaster Recovery Grant	R26 147 000	Interventions to sinkhole formation conditions
		R16 304 000	Interventions to storm damages
2018/2019		R200 654 000
2019/2020	No disaster grant allocations
2020/2021	Municipal Disaster Relief Grant	R157 137 000
Total (flood and storm damage interventions)	R400 242 000

(d) (i) The total amount of R14,7 billion was transferred to the eThekwini over the last 5 years and (ii) R909 million had to be returned to the National Fiscus.

The eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality has received various grants (conditional and unconditional) from the national fiscus over the last five years to assist with infrastructure development. They are:

• Municipal Emergency Housing Grant
• Neighbourhood Development Partnership Grant
• Integrated National Electrification Programme (Municipal) Grant
• Energy Efficiency and Demand Side Management Grant
• Municipal Disaster Recovery Grant
• Public Transport Network Grant
• Urban Settlements Development Grant
• Integrated City Development Grant

Financial tear	Grants received	Actual Expenditure reported	Total unspent	Approved Rollover	Amount to be returned
2016/17	2,976,972	2,948,818	28,154	-	28,154
2017/18	3,036,370	2,700,090	336,280	554	335,726
2018/19	2,984,325	2,482,135	502,190	2,662	499,528
2019/20	3,189,069	3,120,680	68,389	32,449	35,940
2020/21	2,515,345	2,497,398	17,947	8,528	9,419
Total	14,702,081	13,749,121	952,960	44,193	908,767

National Treasury

(ii) The total amount of R908.7 million was recorded as unspent conditional grants by the National Treasury (this amount has since returned to the NRF). This amount excludes the grants allocated for operational purposes, unconditional grants, indirect grants and the rollover approved amount of R44.2 million.