Treasury grappling with Mandela funeral expenses
Almost 10 years since the death of former President Nelson Mandela, National Treasury is still trying to regularise some of government’s expenditure on his state funeral, reports EWN.
It is asking Parliament to approve an outstanding amount of R3.6m to be funded from the National Revenue Fund.
The figure forms part of just over R10m spent by the Government Communication and Information Services (GCIS).
Treasury says the unauthorised expenditure occurred because the GCIS had no budget allocation to pay for services related to the funeral.
The National Treasury has presented Parliament’s Scopa with unauthorised expenditure totalling R17bn incurred by 12 government departments, some of it dating as far back as 2005.
Treasury said that because the state funeral was held in December and after the mid-term Budget, no money was allocated for this purpose.
GCIS spent R10.6m on funeral-related costs, almost R7m of which it was able to cover through reprioritising expenditure.
Treasury is recommending that other departments have their future years’ budgets cut, to accommodate the unauthorised spending.
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