F/ Town City Council Budget Cut By P40M

Palesa Gaselabone | Monday January 18, 2021 17:07

The council’s Finance and General purposes committee chairperson, Lesego Kwambala revealed this when addressing COFC’s special full council session on the endorsement budget estimates 2021-2022 last Friday.

Kwambala , who is also the area councillor for Itekeng ward, said the budget was reduced from the original P 257,865.620.00 to a final proposal of P217,335,688 which is a reduction of P40,529,932.00.

He said the proposed budget was made amid the debilitating effects of COVID-19, which has negatively hit the national fiscal muscle thereby necessitating the downwards revisions in 2021/2022 budget ceilings for both the recurrent and development expenditures.

He added the last quarter of the current financial year has been severely affected.

According to Kwambala ,COFC proposed 2021/2022 budget at P257,865,620.00 out of which P219,820,460.00 was the Revenue Support Grant (RSG) adding that this RSG has now been revised downwards by P179,136,805.00 which is an overall downward revision of 16%.

Consequently ,Kwambala said they have responded that from the proposed budget all their departments had to adjust to their budget by the same 16% so as to accommodate the revised ceiling that have been provided.

The reduced budget will affect service provision, and force them to defer some projects and programmes due to reprioritisation, explaining that their objectives will not be fully met.

He said as funding from central government continues to run short, they need as a matter of priority to focus on their source of income and collect vigorously so as to meet this ever widening funding gap.

“We have to practise prudency in our expenditure not only the remainder of the current financial year, but even during the next financial years. More efforts have to be placed in collections of our property rates, service levies and all other fees due to council,” he added.

He challenged all the COFC councillors and staff to work collectively in this exercise and explore new sources of revenue in an effort to augment the funding from the central government through RSG.

Earlier when giving the welcome remarks, COFC Mayor Godisang Radisigo said they started the budgeting processing in August 2020 when the house approved the estimated budget, which was P257,865,620.00 .

He added that then the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development has reduced the budget for their ministry by 1.6 percent. Therefore, they have since received advice to reduce their budget by 16%.

He said this does not come as a surprise as throughout the current financial year government had to occasionally revised the budget and put in place measures intended to reduce expenditure to mitigate against the negative effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the economy.

Radisigo said the expenditure for the current financial year is at 71% of the total provision, therefore, he added that since the bulk of the budget is personnel emoluments , there is a need to heed the advice they have given to cut all unnecessary spending.

However, he added that as they struggle to make the necessary adjustment they need to ensure that their priority areas are catered for.

Their priorities remain maintenance of infrastructure, provision of social support and facilitation of partnerships with the private sector to stimulate local economic development, he said.