National Treasury assess municipality's budget and performance

GEORGE NEWS - National Treasury, accompanied by the representatives from the Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), Neighbourhood Development Partnership Programme and Provincial Treasury visited the George Municipality on a two-day programme as part of the mid-year budget and performance assessment for municipalities.

The municipality was represented by Mayor Leon van Wyk, Portfolio Councillor for Financial and Strategic Services Dirk Wessels, Municipal Manager Dr Michele Gratz, CFO Riaan du Plessis, the directors of the George Municipality, senior managers and managers.

"Twice a year we have engagements with National Treasury that assesses and reviews our finances," said Van Wyk.

"We are one of the privileged intermediate cities in the country that are a non-delegated municipality, in other words, we report directly to National Treasur. Our engagements with them are always valuable as we can discuss our infrastructure needs, various financing needs and the biggest challenges we face, the load-shedding and electricity.

"We therefore value these engagements enormously and it is then we have that opportunity to engage directly with them and bring the major challenges that we face as municipalities to their attention."

On the first of the two-day-visit (16 March), the municipality made a number of presentations to the delegation, including a recap of the financial performance for 2020/2021, 2022/2023 mid-year and the 2022/2023 adjustments budget proposals.

In front from left are George Municipality CEO Riaan du Plessis, Municipal Manager Dr Michele Gratz, Mayor Leon van Wyk, Dirk Wessels and National Treasury director responsible for George Municipality Mandla Gilimani. At the back are senior municipal officials and representatives from National Treasury, Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), Neighbourhood Development Partnership Programme and Provincial Treasury.

Site visits

On Friday 17 March the delegation visited infrastructure projects of the municipality's electrotechnical and civil engineering departments. One of the sites they visited is the new 66/11kV, 40MVA electrical substation that is currently under construction in Thembalethu.

This substation will be among the largest of its kind in the Southern Cape, and a major bulk infrastructure milestone for the city of George.

It will improve reliability and provide an adequate capacity of electrical supply to the area, alleviate the load on the substations that are currently supplying Thembalethu and will serve as an important catalyst for investment funding from both the state and business.

Another site visited was the 20Ml/d extensions to the New Water Treatment Works (WTW). George Municipality received a Budget Facility for Infrastructure Funding (BFI) grant to the value of R1,107 billion from National Treasury in the 2021/22 financial year and to date, significant progress and expenditure of this grant has been made.

George Municipality is actively working to keep our economy on the go by ensuring adequate long-term planning and investment in our resources – that is, water, sewerage and electricity.

The National Treasury expressed its overall impression of their visit to George Municipality.

"We are here to conduct the mid-year visit with the municipality. We are very impressed with the municipality's handling of its finances. One of the good things that other municipalities are struggling with is paying creditors, but George Municipality has consistently shown its ability to pay its creditors.

"The municipality is on a sustainable path; one of the other things that the municipality is doing well is the appropriateness to cushion their communities and businesses [against] load-shedding by fast-tracking the implementation of the Independent Power Producers (IPPs) projects," said Mandla Gilimani, National Treasury Director responsible for George Municipality. Gilimani praised the municipality for its well-maintained infrastructure.

The Auditor-General advised late last year that George Municipality achieved a clean audit for 2021/22.

This, according to the Municipal Manager Dr Michele Gratz, is "a testament to the hard work being put in by the administration to continuously improve service delivery while also maintaining the highest quality in our administrative processes".

Mayor Leon van Wyk welcomes National Treasury.