NATIONAL NEWS - The Treasury says tough trade-offs would have to be made to increase funding to political parties given the country’s competing budget demands and constraints on the fiscus.
Political parties already receive more than R1 billion in various allocations both at national and provincial level.
Over the past three years, public political funding has increased at an annual average rate of 4%.
Treasury’s deputy director general of budgets Michael Sachs says further increasing funding to political parties would mean either borrowing money, raising taxes or cutting existing budgets.
These options would be undesirable given the country’s current economic situation.
“There are real needs across the system and we need to balance those needs going forward.”
