The South African government is the largest land baron in South Africa, but the entity does not have an accurate record of its property portfolio.
These are the latest facts, according to Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson.
The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure also noted that the government does not have an accurate assessment of how these assets are being used.
The department noted that all protracted attempts to audit the properties has been unsuccessful.
The minister said that according to state records, government owns around 88,000 buildings and five million hectares of land.
These two assets are valued at around R155 billion, according to Macpherson, but he is deeply concerned that their assets were not accurately evaluated.
“I am not happy with, and have very little confidence in, the asset-management register that has been presented to me because a lot of it does not make sense,” he said on Wednesday evening.
“One property is valued at R5 million when I know that should have a R200 million valuation,” he exclaimed.
He made it clear that the new government of national unity (GNU) is still fighting over how to adequately address these issues.
Another state-owned company
Macpherson said that one of the options is to create a property management trading company that would allow government to use its assets to fund other infrastructure development projects.
The new minister and his department have been called on to fast-track some of the planned infrastructure projects expected in the next few years.
His office has also been asked to cut some of the red tape that exists to get the projects off the ground and finished.
“Infrastructure South Africa will help all spheres of government to help manage and package projects that have a value of R1 billion and above.
“This is a way to radically rethink how infrastructure projects are dealt with and how government finances them,” he added.
In 2023, the government’s annualised budget was around R193.2 billion for infrastructure projects. South Africa’s future investment project budget has been recalculated to R793.7 billion in the first six months of 2024, according to Nedbank.
South Africa’s municipalities
Earlier this week, the 2022-2023 Local Government Audit Outcomes also noted that there has been little change when it comes to the improvement in the government of South Africa’s municipalities.
According to Auditor General (AG) Tsakani Maluleke, the trend of poor audit outcomes in local government continued, with only 34 (13%) of municipalities obtaining clean audits.
“Meaningful improvement over the term of the new administration was not evident, while 45 municipalities have improved their audit outcomes since 2020-21, 36 have regressed,” Maluleke explained.
“The most prevalent audit outcome was an unqualified audit opinion on the financial statements, with findings on performance reporting and/or compliance with key legislation at 43% of municipalities. These municipalities had made little effort to move out of this category, with 77 remaining there since the end of the previous administration’s term,” she noted.
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