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Johannesburg - The government's ability to deliver on budget objectives should come under greater scrutiny, according to Pramesh Bhana who is Africa leader for governance, risk and oversight services at Deloitte.
He said the government needs more money and Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene will have to indicate in his budget speech where this money will come from.
Bhana said a lot of focus has been on additional revenue streams, but he questioned the large amount of resources that are either mismanaged or involved in fraud and corruption.
"I am hoping that Minister Nene will provide a tangible indicator of how we are going to measure government performance," he said.
"The challenge of spending the budget optimally and effectively will remain hotly contested, particularly in the context of high unemployment, inequality and valuable resources being wasted through misappropriation and poor management.
Bhana pointed out that it will be particularly interesting to see if Nene goes as far as to being explicit about initiatives to regularly report on the performance of the state at all levels, against the objectives linked to the budget.
He said a good example of this is an index or barometer of government performance like the Mo Ibrahim corporate governance index in Africa.
"Just to illustrate this point further: would it not be valuable and very relevant if we had a municipal rating index so that any citizen can see how well each municipality is performing, perhaps every six months, if not every quarter?
"Would this type of rating index not create a healthy competitive environment fostered through peer pressure with each municipality striving to be better than the next?"
He said this could also be applied to state-owned enterprises like Eskom, SAA and the SABC.
Watch the full interview with Bhana:
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