The Western Cape provincial treasury will beef up its efforts to improve financial management and fight corruption, finance MEC Alan Winde said.
|||Cape Town - The Western Cape provincial treasury will beef up its efforts to improve financial management and fight corruption, finance MEC Alan Winde said on Friday.
His asset management programme would continue to help enforce the efficient management of financial systems, supply-chain and moveable asset management across the provincial and municipal spheres, he said.
This would be done to close loopholes which resulted in corruption.
“With its allocation of R39.8 million... this programme will focus on enforcing compliance with the supply chain... by ensuring data integrity and transparency in reporting and by training the staff who deal with government financial transactions,” Winde said.
He was delivering his provincial budget in the legislature in Cape Town.
In total, the provincial treasury received a budget of R446.2m in the 2013/14 financial year.
This included R252.6m being housed within the Western Cape department of finance for distribution to special projects. The money would be disbursed once the implementation plans for these projects had received final approval.
Winde allocated R24.8m for financial governance to develop stringent accounting and financial management practices within provincial and local government.
At a municipal level, in the coming year, the primary tasks of this programme would be to improve the application of Generally Recognised Accounting Practice (Grap) standards and financial reporting, he said.
Winde said he wanted full compliance with Grap minimum standards by 2015.
An amount of R86.2m was set aside for the provincial wide area network plan.
A further R34.7m had been allocated for e-education hardware, and R6.9m for broadband library services.
Private sector investment in the green economy would get a boost of R6m.
Just under R104m had been earmarked for the development of systems and processes which would professionalise the public service, strengthen accountability, improve co-ordination and reduce instances of corruption, Winde said.
“Under this allocation, funding has been earmarked for the roll out of biometric fingerprinting devices for those staff members designated to handle government's money,” he said. - Sapa