GOVERNANCE
Our new index tracks how well cities and towns spend your money
Tamar Kahn reveals the good, the bad and the ugly of municipal finances
A new index compiled by Business Day reveals the good, the bad and the ugly of SA’s municipal finances. It allocates each municipality a score out of 100 points based on five indicators: its audit outcome for 2014-15; whether it had a permanent or acting municipal manager and chief financial officer; how strictly it managed its debtors; whether it under-or overspent its 2015-16 operational budget; and whether it spent its conditional infrastructure grants that fiscal year. (See box for more details.) Many municipalities struggle to recruit and retain senior staff, and the problem is particularly acute in rural areas, because many professionals do not want to live there, according to Ian Palmer, adjunct professor attached to the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities. "If you don’t have a good chief financial officer or good technical head of department, that starts causing all sorts of problems," he says. "There is quite a strong correlation between the length of time a...
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