Parliament, Wednesday 29 July 2020 – Today’s National Assembly (NA) sitting passed the 2020 Adjustments Appropriation Bill and it will now go to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), for concurrence.
The Bill appropriates money from the National Revenue Fund to provide for requirements of the state for the 2020/21 financial year. It makes specific allocations to specific state departments and entities and sets conditions for spending these.
An amendment to the Bill also enables the Minister of Finance to approve urgent expenditure for contingencies’ funding before October. This is when a second Adjustments Appropriation Bill is due for introduction, with the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement.
The 2020 Appropriations Act, related to the February Budget Speech, enabled the Minister of Finance to approve expenditure, which could not reasonably be delayed without negatively affecting service delivery.
The 2020 Adjustments Appropriations Bill is part of the special 2020 Supplementary Adjustments Budget, which Minister of Finance Mr Tito Mboweni tabled in Parliament on 24 June. The COVID-19 pandemic and the worsening economic conditions confronting the country made this special Supplementary Adjustments Budget necessary.
In its written report, recommending that the NA agree to the Bill, the Standing Committee on Appropriations made several observations and recommendations. It concluded with a call to government departments and officials “to always use the resources allocated through the Bill sparingly … in a manner that begins to demonstrate the understanding of what the Coronavirus has done to both public finances and the lives of South Africans, particularly vulnerable households”.
Please click: https://www.parliament.gov.za/storage/app/media/Docs/atc/68467d90-5efe-44fe-bad5-922214d808d9.pdf, to read the committee’s report in this official Parliament paper (Announcements, Tablings and Committee Reports of 28 July 2020), starting from page 3.
The NCOP is scheduled to debate the Bill on 31 July and to vote on it on 4 August.
ISSUED BY THE PARLIAMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA
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