MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

We Support the Budget

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Dear Editor

Today, 7 June 2023, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality’s R19 billion budget to get Nelson Mandela Bay working again, was adopted with the full support of the Democratic Alliance (DA).

This 2023/2024 budget, which was developed by the DA and its coalition partners during their tenure in government, is designed to get Nelson Mandela Bay working again. We consider this budget pro-poor – it is an austere budget which caters for austere times.

The budget is in line with the amendment to the ATTP policy that will see thousands of additional poor households benefiting from free basic services. The city has over the last couple of years seen an exponential decline in the number of beneficiaries.

The budget also has some of the lowest tariff increases across the board of all metropolitan municipalities, with the exception of the DA-governed City of Cape Town.

Keys focus areas in the budget are:

  • An increase in budget for repairs and maintenance, which is sorely needed due to the rapid decline of our existing infrastructure over the last years. This budget allocates 3.8% of the total budget to repairs and maintenance, whilst the ANC only allocated 1.8% in the previous budget.
  • Increased budget for water and sanitation infrastructure, as well as electricity infrastructure.
  • An increase in the delivery of housing top structures with an estimated 1400 to be constructed in the new financial year.

Given the austere nature of the budget there is no room for many big infrastructure projects. The focus has shifted from building new infrastructure to a more balanced view of building some new infrastructure and fixing and maintaining existing infrastructure.

Our biggest concern with the budget remains that the rates policy was not changed to accommodate peri-urban communities.

Ward-based budgets were also not included in the agenda, so it is unclear if the new ANC-EFF coalition government has tampered with these budgets.

The 2023/2024 budget, as compiled by the DA and its partners in the previous multi-party coalition government, is a shining example of what can be done when a stable coalition leads the city.

The DA and its coalition partners have now handed this budget over to the ANC-EFF coalition government and will hold them to account to ensure that this budget is utilised to get Nelson Mandela Bay working again.

Regards

Cllr Retief Odendaal
DA NMB Caucus Leader

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.