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However, the Budget Vote Speech presented by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on Wednesday stuck true to his promise in last year's medium-term budget policy statement (MTBPS) that the effective real increase in overall government spending would be around 2.2%.

This would be marginally lower than the country’s estimated GDP growth rate of 2.7% for the year.

In the 2011/12 fiscal year overall government expenditure grew by 9.1% to R979 billion and the lower across the board increases in the new fiscal year, including in some cases effective budget reductions, were aimed at ensuring that government spending would slowly shift to an investment rather than expenditure focus.

It would also ensure that government would have a better chance at servicing its debt and stave off talk of austerity measures.

This lower rate of increase also gave effect to Gordhan's promise in the MTBPS that government departments would receive a "haircut" in the new fiscal year.

The slow down in overall government spending would also help reduce the budget deficit that Gordhan said in his 2012/13 proposals would be reduced from 4.8% of GDP in 2011/12 to 3% in 2014/15.

Social services received the biggest slow down in its rate of increase.

For the 2012/13 fiscal year social services’ overall increase was 7.9% to R615.7 billion, compared with an increase of 11.8% the year before. This moved social services from having the second highest increase in the 2011/12 year to the second lowest for the new fiscal year.

The biggest effective rate of increase went to the economic affairs cluster with a 7.7% rise to R145 billion. In the 2011/12 year it decreased by 5.9%.

General public services was the cluster with the highest overall rate of increase at 9.8% to R141.4 billion compared to a rate increase of 11.9% before. The bulk of its allocation will go to servicing state debt costs at R89.4 billion a rise of 16.6% compared with a rise of 15% last year.

The rate of increase for defence expenditure slowed to 8.5% to R41.6 billion compared with a previous hike of 13.2%.

Public order and safety's rate of increase remained steady at an increase of 8.2% rising to R90.9 billion with the SA Police Service receiving the bulk of the allocation at R60.7 billion rand.

Within the social services cluster of expenditure, the highest rate of increase of 11.7% went to the housing and community amenities subcomponent at R120.1 billion as its water supply component was hiked by an increase of 13.7% to R32.1 billion.

Overall health expenditure rose by 7.1% to R121.9 billion compared with a rate of increase of 9.8% in the 2011/12 year. Within this, administration and other health services saw the biggest rate of increase at 19.1% to R18.9 billion. Several other components of health expenditure such as central hospital service’s health infrastructure and allocations for HIV/Aids treatment saw their rates of increases clipped.

Education had its rate of increase snipped down to 6% from an increase of 9.7% in the 2011/12 fiscal year to R207.3 billion. However, its subcomponent of tertiary education had a 13.9% rate of increase to R31.3 billion after having only had it raised by 6.8% in the 2011/12 year.

Basic education had its rate of increase slashed from 10.6% in 2011/12 to 4.6% at R152.1 billion.

The overall social protection budget rose by 9.1% to R157.9 billion for the 2012/13 fiscal year, but in the previous year the rate of increase was 10.7%.

Within that component of government expenditure social security fund benefits was the biggest winner with a rate increase of 16.5% to R29.4 billion after having been given an 11.4% rise in the previous year. These increases were consistent with overall policy to extend social security fund benefits.

The two biggest losers in the social protection sector were the provincial welfare services that had their rate increase cut down to a 6% rise from a hike of 13.5% the year before to R12.3 billion and old age pensions that had their allocation cut to an increase of 5.4%, after the previous year’s increase rate of 8.2%, to R39.3 billion.

Go to Budget 2012 Special Report