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Cape Town - The government's immovable assets register will be "substantially" completed by March 2015, Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi announced on Tuesday.
"This is a real game changer," he told reporters at Parliament.
The value of property owned by the State is an estimated R300bn.
Speaking on the eve of debate in the National Assembly on his department's R6.2bn budget, Nxesi said the completed register would prove a powerful tool.
"With a sustainable register of state immovable assets in place, we will have at our disposal the tools to leverage this massive property portfolio for economic development."
Public works had still to allocate custodianship of 4 500 land parcels, and about 24 000 land parcels needed to be vested.
"The state land reconciliation with Deeds Office records has been substantially completed... This exercise involved scrutinising the records of some 180 000 land parcels, [and] ascribing custodianship to the responsible department or level of government."
Figures obtained from this exercise would form the basis of a physical verification process, set to start in July this year.
On the audit of office accommodation leased by public works to government departments, Nxesi said a review of the portfolio of 2 788 leased properties across the country was complete.
"To date, 100% of these leases have been reviewed. Of these, 1 316 required attention, revision or renewal. These we regard as backlog leases - 365 of them have already been addressed.
"Recommendations for the remaining 951 leases will be in place by the end of June [this year]."
An idea of the scale of the problem could be gained from the fact "that only 42% of floor plans and tenant contact details are in place".
Basic information meant to accompany leases was either not collected or lost.
On his department's turnaround strategy, Nxesi said this was "well underway".
Among other things, funding had been obtained from National Treasury, planning processes were well advanced, and, crucially, "we have also stabilised the leadership of the department".
Updating reporters on the outcomes of investigations into fraud and corruption that has plagued the department, Nxesi said 23 of 40 investigations into irregular leases and projects were now complete.
"This has resulted in successful disciplinary actions, the dismissal of six officials, including one deputy director-general, and court actions to recover monies wrongly paid by the department.
"We are awaiting reports from disciplinary hearings involving one deputy director-general and one chief director."
The Special Investigating Unit had completed its investigations into prestige projects in Pretoria, involving renovations to ministerial houses.
"They have recommended that we discipline [the] officials involved, which we have started to implement.
"SIU investigations, together with recent findings of the Competition Commission, tell the same story: over-pricing and collusion between some officials and sections of the construction industry."
Questioned on the Nkandla investigation, Nxesi declined to be drawn in detail on the type of irregularities uncovered.
"Let me just remind you... our report is a classified report... because it deals with security issues.
"We have indicated that supply chain processes and how you appoint service providers... we think that some people will have to answer some questions.
"We have also indicated we are very critical about pricing... We don't want to say more [at this stage]," he said.
