Stepping up: A Treasury you can Invest in
Honourable Speaker,
Premier and Cabinet Colleagues,
Members of this House,
Officials of the Provincial Treasury,
Residents of Western Cape
Speaker, today I table before you the Budget of the Provincial Treasury, amounting to R1.14 billion over 3 years, of which R359.75 million will be allocated for the 2025/26 financial year - the smallest departmental vote of the Western Cape Government.
Our budget consists of 4 main units - Administration, Sustainable Resource Management, Asset Management, and Financial Governance, but if you allow me Speaker, I would like to speak more transversally about the work our Treasury will embark upon this year.
Since 2019, the Provincial Treasury has concentrated on enhancing governance for the attainment of tangible results and efforts were geared towards establishing itself as a foundation for effective service delivery. The next phase of our journey is becoming an enabler and reliable partner - actively collaborating with the key co-ordinating ministries (the Department of the Premier and the Department of Local Government) to support our government and municipalities with a co-ordinated approach towards service delivery.
Speaker, as the saying goes, ‘if [we] want to go fast [we must] go alone. But if [we] want to go far, [we must] go together’. That’s what the Innovation cluster is about - it is about teamwork. And as one of the Innovation cluster departments, it our job to support and enable departments and municipalities so that together we can deliver growth and jobs for our residents. In order to achieve this, I would like to ask the House today, to Invest in our Province by Investing in our Treasury.
1. Home for dinner
I would like to start off with Culture and our People.
Speaker, due to the nature of our work, our Treasurers are our biggest strength. This is why our biggest budget item in this vote is Compensation of Employees.
We will see an increase of Compensation of Employees (COE) of R42.6 million to R240.5 million in 2025/26. This is mainly to make provision for the impact of the cost-of-living adjustments but also for filling of critical vacant posts. This also makes up the bulk of the R53.5 million increase you will observe within our vote for this year. To put this into context speaker, COE will comprise 67 per cent of our total three-year departmental allocation for the vote.
But filling vacant critical posts will not be enough - as our department competes with salaries in municipalities and with the private sector. We must therefore prioritise capacity building, innovation, and well-being to foster a motivated and high-performing team. So, how do we achieve this?
Speaker, at the end of the day, most people want the same things in life. We want a roof over our head, dignified work, access to electricity and water, quality healthcare and education, and we want to be Home for Dinner.
In order to support our team to live lives they value - to be in time for the soccer game, to attend the ballet recital, to be fully focussed on being the best Braaimaster they can be - we must make some changes.
Key components will therefore include targeted professional development, youth development through internships and bursary programmes, an integrated approach to talent acquisition to attract external talent, strategies to prioritise work-life rhythm, technological integration and creating a culture that values lifelong learning and adaptability.
We are therefore going to become obsessed with filling critical vacancies as this will be the first step. Our next step will be to use technology to alleviate our Treasurer’s workloads so that they can focus on the important strategic matters, matters in our society that require nuance and context. Let AI deal with the admin. We will deal with vision! Speaker, while we won’t be able to achieve this overnight, by working as a Team, we can get our Treasurer’s Home for Dinner.
Therefore, if you believe you have what it takes to be a Treasurer for the Western Cape government, know that we will allocate R7.5 million for our external bursary programme over 3 years.
Further through the work of our Supporting and Interlinked Financial Systems (SIFS) unit, we will upgrade our legacy systems and work towards a fully Integrated Financial Management Platform. At the heart of our Evergreen Legacy System (ELS) strategy will be our PT Data Warehouse, which consolidates data for improving reporting capabilities and supports evidence-based decision-making, driving economic and financial growth.
In order to thus get our officials in the Treasury, in our departments and even at times in our municipalities, Home for Dinner, we will allocate R39.3 million over 3 years towards upgrading and enhancing our Evergreen Legacy Systems (ELS), including support towards our eProcurement System (ePS) and Procurement Planning Automation Toolkit; supporting Application Transformation Readiness, which will include funding to implement our SCM reform; and support and enhance our Provincial Treasury Data Centre.
2. Innovation: A province you can invest in
Speaker, as you know we are heavily reliant on the national equitable share and conditional grants. Therefore, we will explore new revenue sources, enhance our current revenue sources, and explore alternative and blended financing models, particularly for infrastructure projects. We can do this because we have positive balance sheets, quality financial statements, clean audits, and strong checks and balances.
Speaker, we are a Province you can Invest in.
In order to Explore the Alternative and Blended Financing (ABF) models, we will establish an Alternative and Blended Finance policy framework.
To implement this work we will allocate R 4.9 million in the current financial year to establish a panel of experts to evaluate infrastructure project proposals; and allocate R3.5 million over the 2025 MTEF to appoint dedicated capacity to explore alternative revenue sources for the province.
We will further collaborate with the National Treasury and the World Bank to establish a Blended Finance Risk Sharing Platform - a Credit Guarantee Vehicle (CGV) - which aims to mobilise private capital by de-risking critical projects in the energy, transport and water sectors, before expanding to areas within the social sector.
To further Enhance our Revenue Sources, we will work with the National Treasury to make use of the Budget Facility for Infrastructure and technical assistance from Infrastructure South Africa for provincial departments and municipalities.
We will leverage the amended Public-Private Partnership (PPP) regulations from the National Treasury to accelerate infrastructure delivery and attract private investment.
And we will work with the Department of Economic Development and Tourism (DEDAT) to undertake research on the impact of international tourism and possible related international tourism tax revenue.
3 Trust: Understanding how Government spends your money
Speaker, it is important that the Treasury’s work is based on data and evidence. It is also important for residents to know how government spends the people’s money and what we base our decisions on. For this we require credible data and evidence. We will thus continue to innovate through our Provincial Economic Review and Outlook (PERO), Municipal Economic Review and Outlook (MERO), and Budget documents.
The Provincial Treasury recently added a new publication - having launched our first-of-its-kind Local Government Budget Review publication, a transparent and data-driven snapshot of the financial health of all 30 municipalities in the province for the 2023/24 financial year based on pre-audited outcomes. This publication focussed on revenue collection, infrastructure investment, and the efficient use of grants and subsidies.
We hope to continue building on this work in the coming year and will allocate R7.3 million towards innovation in our research publications.
To further foster trust and ensure that we are responsible in the way we spend the people’s money, we will allocate R3.080 million for expenditure reviews over the next 3 years. We continuously conduct expenditure reviews and will continue to find ways to be more efficient, making the people’s money stretch a little bit further.
4. Value for money: Making it easy to do business with Government
Speaker, it is important that we make it easy to do business with government. Therefore, over and above the funding we are allocating to enhance technology linked to our procurement systems and reforming our SCM, we will allocate R600 000 towards a SMART Procurement Conference this year so that we can make it easier for you to do business with government. We will further continue to publish and enhance our Public Procurement Disclosure reports which we publish on a quarterly basis.
But Speaker, the current national Public Procurement Act is an obstacle for residents of the Western Cape doing business with Government - with its proposed centralisation and stripping away of provincial powers, threatening provincial procurement systems and having the potential to skyrocket our costs. We will thus launch a Constitutional challenge against the Public Procurement Act because we believe no one should ever be excluded from participating in our provincial economy.
5. Fairness: WCGRB and fair taxation
Speaker, I would like to end with the principle of fairness in relation to our Western Cape Gambling and Racing Board (WCGRB) (“the Board”) and gambling and racing taxes. The second biggest budget item you would have seen in the Treasury vote is an increase of R25.4 million over 3 years to increase capacity for the Board. It is important to note that the last time capacity for the board increased was about 15 years ago, and over that same period, the board has tripled the gambling and racing taxes it has collected for the province over same period. With the increase of online sports betting, it is thus important to ensure that our board is capacitated to collect these taxes for the provincial fiscus. We are forecasting that the board will collect more than R3 billion in taxes for the provincial fiscus over the next 3 years.
It is further important that board members are fit and proper to serve on the board and to ensure that we adhere to legislative prescripts, we will allocate R120 000 per annum for probity assessments as part of the Fiscal Policy unit in Provincial Treasury so that anyone who applies to serve is vetted accordingly.
Our Fiscal Policy Unit, in supporting the principle of fair taxation, we will allocate R2 million for research within the gambling sector to ensure that economic development is balanced with the potential socio-economic impact on our residents.
Finally, we will lobby the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (DTIC) and the national Parliament to expedite the Remote Gambling Bill to regulate illegal online gambling, protect our residents against the harms of the industry, and for the corresponding taxation to flow to provinces.
6. Financial and Corporate Governance
Speaker, to support Financial and Corporate Governance, we will conduct provincial and local government accounting training (particularly on accounting topics such as Annual Reports, In Year Monitoring, GRAP and the Modified Cash Standard). We will further continue to support internal audit and risk management research, as well as support departments and municipalities with their audit and accounting queries.
7. Strong municipalities
Speaker, we need strong municipalities to be able to deliver services to residents in our province. We will thus support 12 municipalities through our Western Cape Financial Management Capability Grant with projects amounting to over R63 million over 3 years.
We will allocate R2 million to appoint a MSCOA Project Manager over the 2025 and 2026 financial years; we will allocate over R6 million for the Municipal Financial Recovery Services Grant to support municipalities requiring financial interventions; we will participate in the national review of the Local Government White Paper and possible legislative amendments, and we will allocate R1.182 million for a Revenue Master Class to support Municipalities with work on revenue enhancement and generation.
Over and above the continuous accounting, auditing, economic and procurement support we offer municipalities, the following municipalities will benefit from R18.6 million allocation through our Municipal Financial Capability Grant in 2025/26:
Cederberg Municipality will receive R2.5 million for the installation of smart water meters;
Matzikama Municipality will receive R1.2 million for Asset Management system support, and R1.48 million for replacement of induction meters projects;
Overstrand Municipality will receive R240 000 for a feasibility study for a Credit Control and Debt Collection Unit, and R432 000 for long term financial planning projects;
Hessequa Municipality will receive R250 000 for indigent management, R600 000 for asset verification, and R200 000 for long term financial planning projects;
Oudtshoorn Municipality will receive R160 000 for developing a cost reflective tariff setting tool, R800 000 for smart meter replacement, and R100 000 for internal audit support;
Overberg District Municipality will receive R1.42 million for revenue enhancement and optimisation, R1.3 million for tourism enhancement, R750 000 for a feasibility study for the holiday resort ownership restructuring, and R300 000 for a feasibility study for the establishment of a crematorium projects;
Saldanha Bay Municipality will receive R2 million for the installation of smart water meters;
Kannaland Municipality will receive R500 000 for a municipal performance management data system and its roll-out;
Beaufort West Municipality will receive R495 000 for a comprehensive cost of supply study and revenue optimisation within a changing energy landscape;
Central Karoo District Municipality will receive R400 000 for capacitor budget and treasury staff on accounting and annual financial statement preparations, and R500 000 for long term financial planning projects;
Prince Albert Municipality will receive R800 000 for long term financial planning, R700 000 for revenue enhancement and indigent system verification, and R1 million for installation of water and electricity meter projects; and
Laingsburg Municipality will receive R540 000 for revenue optimisation and enhancing water management.
8. Conclusion
Speaker, as a Provincial Treasury, we will continue to fight for our fair share for our province because we believe in Fairness. Trust is important to us, so we will Step Up to ensure residents understand how government spends their money.
We will Innovate by diversifying our revenue sources and using technology to get our officials Home for Dinner to live lives they value, and we will focus on Value-for-Money by making it easier to do business with government.
We will continue to support strong financial and corporate governance. We will do all of this because it our job to support and enable departments and municipalities so that we can deliver Growth and Jobs for our residents.
I would like to thank our wonderful Treasury team, led by our Head of Treasury, Ms Julinda Gantana for her leadership, unwavering dedication and commitment that our Treasury will be innovating in ways we’ve never seen before; our departmental officials for your hard work to bring these programmes together and for stepping up towards a more revenue-focussed Treasury. A special thank you to our CFO, Ms Annamarie Smit, for making sure that we stick to good governance principles en dat ons eie boeke klop. To my Ministry team, led by Dr Grant Caswell, thank you and Ms Marshalle Frederiks and Mr Lenku-Vince Oosthuizen for your strategic advice, guidance, and many, many robust legal, economic and fiscal debates.
To every Treasurer of our 336 establishment, the smallest government department in our province and the smallest Treasury in our country - know that the reason we are a Province people can Invest in, is because you are a Treasury we can Invest in - and it is my hope that this budget vote reflects that.
Speaker I hereby table the Provincial Treasury vote and hope that the house support it.
I thank you.