The Honourable Speaker

The Honourable Speaker

Members of the Mayoral Committee

Ward Councillors

Officials

Members of the Community

Media

Honourable Speaker, I wish to commence my speech by stating that we are leaving in an extraordinary time in human history – a time of immense transition, of profound risks, but also of great opportunies. It is therefore a priviledge and an honour to stand here to introduce the draft 2011/2012 Idp and budget. This budget sets us on a path that will be neither easy nor uncontested and what it means is that hard work and difficult choices lie ahead of us. I wish to remind this house that we have embarked on the long walk to economic freedom and all South African aspire to the following freedoms

ü  Freedom from poverty

ü  Freedom from need

ü  Freedom to exercise our talents and thrive as individuals, and lastly

ü  Freedom to work together as communities, as organised social formation, as business enterprices, as a proud and forwardlooking nation.

Honourable members, you are all aware that the Local Government: Municipal Systems Act, Act 32 of 2000 compels all the municipalities to review and implement their integrated development plans in ensuring that municipalities adheres to their developmental mandates.

However, the draft 2011/2012 I.D.P and Budget is not only premised, from the above-mentioned pieces of legislation, from the ruling party’s point of view, but take its tune from the following five key priorities as identified in the Local Government election manifesto of the African National Congress:

Ø  Building local economies to create more employment, decent work and sustainable livelihoods;

Ø  Improve local public services and the broadening of access to them;

Ø  Building more united, non-racial, integrated and safer communities;

Ø  Promoting more active community participation in local government, and

Ø  Ensuring more effective, accountable and clean local governement that works together with national and provincial governement.

Honourable members, it is our strong belief that our I.D.P should always be aligned to the provincial growth and development plans which is also reviewed every five years. Further to this, the draft 2011/2012 I.D.P and budget is as a result of careful scrutiny of the municipality’s turnaround strategy, outcome 8 and 9 and an extensive stakeholder engagement that recently took place.

Honourable Speaker, I therefore consider it necessary to outline a brief background on the draft budget that will be tabled today. You will recall that this municipality embarked on an early adjustment of its 2010/2011 budget. This was mainly due to the cash challenges encountered by the municipality which emanated from a variety of reasons ranging from 2010 World Cup, the non-payment of municipal debt, unfunded mandates from the provincial government, etc. All of the above varying reasons clearly indicated that the 2010/2011 budget had to be revised because its non cash backed situation. This revision resulted in an unfortunate situation where certain projects had to be cut because of the limited resources at the time. It also meant that the 2010/2011 revised budget would form the basis of the following year’s budget, i.e. (the current draft 2011/2012 budget).

In substantiating the above statement, the reduction of the 2010/2011 budget during the adjustment process literally meant that certain projects that were earmarked for the same financial year had to be carried over in this draft 2011/2012 budget. The reasons why I felt it necessary to provide this background is the fact during the stakeholder engagement process, some of the comments made revolves around the recycling of 2010/2011 ward priorities. I am emphasizing this point so that this house could clearly understand the reasons as to why certain 2011/2012 ward priorties could not be implemented as planned.

In attempting to develop this draft 2011/2012 I.D.P and Budget, we sincerely considered, as per the legislative requirement and our own consciousness, thatall municipality’s stakeholders should once again be central in the planning processes of the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality.

Honourable Speaker, I once more wish to remind this house that it is a legislative imperative that the process of the I.D.P and Budget should be preceded by an extensive stakeholder engagement, so that the views of all the stakeholders could be incorporated in the draft I.D.P and Budget. In fulfilling this requirement, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality approved the 2011/2012 I.D.P and Budget process plan in July 2010, a process which was meant to guide the council proceedings leading up to the approval of the 2011/2012 I.D.P and the Budget. Unfortunately, both the early adjustment of the 2010/2011 budget together with the 18th May 2011 local government elections, had a negative impact on the approved 2011/2012 I.D.P and Budget process plan.

Honourable speaker, you will recall that during the cash flow difficulty, we all had to focus on the adjustment budget and also during the local government elections, the council had to go on recess. Both the above-mentioned incidents created some serious difficulties in adhering to the approved i.d.p and budget process plan as these incidents took place during the same financial year and clashed with some of the important dates on the 2011/2012 I.D.P and Budget process plan. This has resulted in the revision of the 2011/2012 I.D.P and Budget process plan which we have utilised in engaging all stakeholders for the draft 2011/2012 I.D.P. and Budget to be tabled before this council today.

Honourable Speaker, I wish to mention that we have confidently consulted with all our relevant stakeholders despite the fact that the consultation process might have been perceived as insufficient by some of our stakeholders. The inputs of all various stakeholders have been taken into consideration in this draft 2011/2012 I.D.P and Budget. I must boldly indicate that we have attempted by all means, with the limited financial resources at our disposal, to consolidate and prioritise certain inputs from various stakeholders so that their aspirations could find expression into the municipality’s i.d.p and the budget.

Honourable Speaker, our total draft 2011/2012 Budget to be tabled today is R8 billion comprising of an operating budget of R6.6 billion and a cpaital budget of R1,4 billion. I note with the greatest concern though, that our capital budget is decreasing year by year and this is the significant portion of the budget as it translates into tangible projects/services rendered directly to the communities on the ground. This situation paints a gloomy picture as it portrays a capital budget that is heavily dependant on grant funding.

Speaker, I must just mention that, after having realised that our 2011/2012 capital budget will not be able to accommodate all ward priorities, we have taken a conscious decision to eastablsh a task team team led by the portfolio chairperson of budget of budget and trasury. The main purpose of this task team is to to consolidate and package the business plans of all unaccommodated projects in the 2011/2012 financial year. The intention is to solicit both the donor funding and additional grant funding from the provincial and national government. Honourable speaker, I’m pleased to announce that this task team has began its daunting task and certain business plans have been developed and submitted to relevant institutions for funding.

Councillors, I therefore wish to remind this house that each municipality has been assigned revenue raising powers in order to close the fiscal gap in funding both its operational activities and capital projects. In view of this, the municipality has identified an urgent need to develop a comprehensive revenue enhancement strategy which includes the Masakhane campaign, Debt Relief Programme, land disposal, management of leases, etc. in order to ensure that the revenue collection rate is increased from the current rate of 93% to 98% at the end of 2011/2012 financial year. Key to our priorities in the 2011/2012 financial year will be to focus on strategies to increase the revenue collection rates which will result in replenishing our depleted capital replacement reserves.

Honourable speaker, I’m singling out the land disposal as one of the short term solutions to the financial recovery of this municipality. Of course, the disposal of land will have to take a series of meaningful engagements as the land question needs to be handled with greatest circumspection.

In addition to this, this municipality will not tolerate the non-implementation of the Operational Efficiency Workplan and the unjustifiable deviation from the financial recovery plan. Honourable Speaker, it is not my intention to step off this debate without mentioning an urgent need for a business process re-engineering in the form of institution diagnosis, which will result in the elimination of both the wasted resources and ineffective time.

This process is extremely urgent and should commence with immediate effect and be completed within 3 months at the most as it involves a number of investigations to be conducted. All that needs to be done is to open up a discussion platform for the engagement of organised labour within the municipality.

Honourable Speaker, one of the worrying factors is the non-payment of debt by other state department operating within the metro. Let me indicate in this gathering that, in this financial year alone, we had a number of meetings with the provincial authorities to try and recoup the monies owed to this municipality. These engagements have produced positive spin offs in that large portion of monies owed by the province were paid out to the metro. Further to this, we have established an intergovernmental relations forum comprising the municipal officials, the office of the premier and provincila departments as we have realised that the delays in payment of services and the timeous release of provincial subsidies can no longer be tolerated by this municipality.

Honourable Speaker, you will recall that the municipality established a multi-party budget monitoring task team to drive the I.d.p and budget related processes. It is our view that this task team be reviewed urgently for two reasons, namely some of its members are no longer with the municipality and that the mandate of this task team also needs to go beyond budget monitoring but include monitoring of the institutional performance as well. This approach will enable this municipality in ensurig that municipal strategic plans such Integrated Development Plans as well as Service Delivery and Budget Implementation Plans and operational activities are constantly monitored.

Honourable speaker, this municipality prides itself with effective service delivery that has been outstanding ever since the ruling party came into power. In adopting the 80/20 budget split, the socio-economic landscape in our previously disadvantaged communities or township if you like has changed drastically. In view of this, honourable speaker, the ruling party commits itself to the above mentioned budget split until the areas of under-development in this municipality are adressed to their logical conclusion.

Honourable Speaker, councillors and members of the community, I wish to conclude by saying, we trust that you will agree that this budget, despite our fiscal and operational challenges, indicates that our dream will not be defered or postponed, but will be realised.

Ladies and gentlemen, working together, the government as whole in close collaboration with our social partners, can accelerate dream realisation. In particular the new national initiatives, combined with the new proposed municipal policy instruments must provide a powerful stimulus to job creation.

In Madiba’s words” In judging our progress as individuals, we tend to concentrate on external factors such as one’s social position, influence and popularity, wealth and standard of education… It is perfectly understandable if many people exert themselves mainly to achieve all these. But internal factors may be even more crucial i.e honesty,sincerity,simplicity,pure generosity,absence of vanity,readiness to serve others _ qualities which are within easy reach of every sole.

Honourable speaker, with those few words, allow me to hand over to the portfolio chairperson of Budget and Treasury, Councillor Balu Naran to table the draft 2011/2012 I.D.P and Budget to this house.

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