Question NW1586 to the Minister of Small Business Development

Reply:

a) I have been advised that the Gazelles Programme was discontinued at the beginning of the 2022/23 financial year and by the time it was discontinued, a budget of R29.8 million was already allocated to this programme during the Estimates of National Expenditure (ENE) process and the related cash flow already approved by National Treasury.

b) A decision was taken to discontinue the Gazelles programme after the MTEF process had closed. The funds were originally allocated to Seda for the discontinued Gazelles programme, whilst a decision was taken to fund the Blended Finance programme – the Youth Start Up programme, which is implemented by sefa.

c) The misalignment was known at the beginning of the financial year as stated in (a) above and the corrective measure was to request and receive approval from national treasury. The approval was granted in November 2022. There was a two-month delay in getting the related cash flow approved. The cash flow approval was in January 2023. It needs to be noted that the department has not exceeded the overall allocated 2022/23 budget.

During the Adjustment Estimates of National Expenditure (AENE) process, DSBD requested for reprioritisation of the Gazelles allocated budget to the Youth start-up programme to be implemented by sefa under the umbrella of the Blended Finance line item. The reprioritisation was approved by National Treasury and the Department was requested to submit the revised cash flow by the 9th of January 2022.

The cashflow for the discontinued Gazelles programme was in November 2022 and it was decided that the available cash for this programme should be redirected to the Youth start-up programme to ensure that the new programme is not delayed any further. Waiting for the cashflow process to be finalised in line with National Treasury’s timelines was going to result in a delay of two months as the revised AENE cashflow was only approved on 23 January 2023.