As long as the ANC remains in power in the Free State, the province will not experience growth and budgetary pressure will continue to mount.
This is evident from the Free State budget tabled by the MEC for Finance, Ketso Makume.
The Free State remains under financial strain due to national fiscal pressure and poor economic growth with a total budget of just R45 billion for the new financial year.
The Departments of Health (R14,1 billion) and Education (R108,8 billion) alone comprise more than 73% of the total budget.
The Department of Education’s overdraft for the past five years amounts to between R900 million and R1 billion. The Treasury also indicated that the Department is expected to once again have a salary budget deficit of R500 million this year.
As usual, not enough funds were earmarked for maintaining infrastructure, such as roads, in the province. The percentage of infrastructure expenditure is a mere 11% of the budget.
Maintaining roads in the province is of cardinal importance seeing as agriculture, which is the largest economic sector in the province, depends on a reliable road network.
Meanwhile, tenders are awarded to contractors in the Free State based on the ANC’s policy of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), which the World Bank also deems a serious risk to economic growth.
With the exception of a handful of ANC elite, no-one and especially no-one in the Free State benefits from the ANC’s race-based policies.
The Free State deserves new policies that will benefit the people of the province and not ANC tenderpreneurs, who fail to get the job done and only enrich themselves in the process.
