ANC-governed departments and SOEs incurred R40 billion a year in fruitless, wasteful, irregular and unauthorised expenditure
9 November 2023
A comprehensive analysis conducted by the DA has uncovered that Ministerial Departments, State-Owned Enterprises, and various entities under the ANC administration have collectively incurred a staggering R40 billion in fruitless and wasteful, irregular, and unauthorised expenditures in the 2022/23 financial year alone.
This alarming figure serves as a stark reminder that the ANC's nearly three decades of governance is characterised by an absence of accountability, transparency, and a lack of commitment to preventing wasteful expenditure from taxpayer's funds.
Fruitless and wasteful expenditure is expenditure that was made in vain and would have been avoided had reasonable care been exercised, whilst irregular expenditure is that which was incurred that is in contravention of or that is not in accordance with a requirement of any applicable legislation. Unauthorised expenditure includes overspending of a budget vote or a main division, or expenditure which is not in accordance with the purpose of a vote.
The analysis scrutinised all expenditure that was spent during the year of assessment by referring to each annual report that was tabled in Parliament, as is required by the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA). In other words, this figure does not include historical figures from prior years, nor does it include expenditure incurred in a prior year but only discovered in 2022/23.