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Budget gets green light

Cape Town - The National Assembly on Thursday approved the 2011/12 budget tabled by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on February 23 this year.

As usual, a number of individual budget votes were opposed by the DA, Congress of the People, Inkatha Freedom Party and other smaller opposition parties.

The DA went so far as to call for a division on various votes to register their strongest possible objection.

This proved a long process due to the House's electronic vote recording system not working, despite the efforts of Parliament's technicians to restore it.

Voting after a division was called - there were eight such calls - involved a show of hands, with party whips counting the ayes and nos, and conveying their tallies to the chair.

The bulk of the 2011/12 consolidated budget of R979.3bn (projected revenue R824.5bn) went to social services -- R577.3bn.

The education budget rose by 9.7% to R189.5bn, with the basic education allocation going up by 10.6% to R145.5bn, and tertiary education by 6.8% to R26bn.

Social protection followed with a budget of R146.9bn, reflecting an increase of 10.7%; housing and community amenities R121.9bn (up by 19.5%); and health R112.6bn (by 9.8%).

The public order and safety budget allocation rose by 8.2% to R90.9bn - police R60.7bn (up 8.5%), prisons R16.5bn (8.6%), and justice R13.7bn (6.2%).

Transport got R65.6bn (up 8.4%) and defence R38.4bn (up 13.2%).

There was an unallocated contingency reserve of R4.1bn.

After the delays caused by the manual voting procedure, the House eventually ended its business at 20:45.

The budget still has to be adopted by the National Council of Provinces.
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