MEDIA STATEMENT
BY THE
INKATHA FREEDOM PARTY
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Inkatha Freedom Party Statement By:
13 November 2007 The IFP welcomes the medium-term budget policy statement introduced by the Finance Minister as we believe that government's spending priorities for the next few years appear to be mostly directed at the right things. We are however concerned that taxpayers should get full value for every Rand the Minister committed. Some of the departments benefiting from the announcements are simply not performing adequately when it comes to financial management as pointed out by the Auditor-General recently. For instance, provincial departments appear to be in a state of audit disarray, yet this medium-term budget shows very strong growth in transfers to municipalities and provinces. The IFP also has to question whether the taxpayer is getting full value for money from the state funds spent on salaries and bonuses for Chief Executives of public entities and agencies. Some of these public entities have had to be rescued by the state on more than one occasion, but government continues to pump money into loss-making entities such as SAA, Denel and the Land Bank. The IFP wants to urge extreme caution in this respect as the Land Bank case has clearly indicated the potential for executives to dole out patronage and to enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayer. We welcome the firm action of the government in respect of the Land Bank, but we want to recommend that National Treasury launch a full investigation into all public agencies and entities to establish whether taxpayers are indeed getting value for money, or if that money is disappearing into a black hole. While we understand the Minister's reasoning for building budget surpluses in the next three years, we are very disappointed that he did not see his way clear to ring-fence the budget surplus and revenue collection overruns and to redirect those funds to strategic interventions in rural development and infrastructure spending on new power generation. The IFP is very concerned about food price inflation as it hits the poorest where it hurts the most - in their daily struggle for survival. While it is to be expected that higher fuel costs would hit food prices to some extent, we have to wonder whether food manufacturers are not only interested in maintaining high profit margins. We suggest that government's food pricing committee investigate this aspect of food pricing and that the Competition Commission should launch a comprehensive investigation into possible collusion and price fixing similar to the Tiger Brands scandal which hit the poorest the hardest.
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