A Mandate Paper, developed to facilitate budget reprioritisation, will be used in this year’s budgeting process to align spending to government priorities.

According to Jeff Radebe, Minister in the Presidency responsible for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, the Mandate Paper was developed after its August 2016 meeting where Cabinet identified the need to strengthen the alignment of the budget, the Medium-Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) and the National Development Plan (NDP).

“The [department] was instructed to develop on an annual basis the Mandate Paper to guide the budget process for 2018 to ensure focused implementation of government’s plans, the minister said”

He said some of the budget priorities for 2018 include job creation and small development, youth development, infrastructure expansion and maintenance, land reform, smallholder farmer and agriculture development, comprehensive social security, education and skills, among others.

The priorities, the Minister said, should reflect the objective assessment and conditions at the time.

“The Mandate Paper therefore allows the MTEF Budget to be much more agile and response instruments of resource allocation to deal with both parameters of the expenditure and revenue generation,” he added.

A guiding tool

The Minister said the Mandate Paper will be an addition to government’s planning tools to ensure effective prioritisation and ensure that resource allocation supports the implementation of the NDP within the prevailing socio-economic context and fiscal framework.

“The Mandate Paper process precedes and guides the budget process. The budget process will continue to be managed by the National Treasury in terms of the Public Finance Management Act.

“Next year and in the future the Mandate Paper will be completed earlier in the planning cycle by the end of April each year to guide all state institutions in developing their budget proposals for the following financial year,” he said.

The Mandate Paper will, among other things, also identify areas that are highlighted by the data that gets released by Statistics South Africa, particularly the indicators of the drivers of poverty like unemployment and education.