By OBAKENG MAJE
The Greater Taung Local Municipality (GTLM) mayor, Tumisang Gaoraelwe said they were able to deliver on some of the services they undertook to deliver to the communities during 2023/24 financial year, regardless of serious budget constraints.
Gaoraelwe, who tabled the municipality’s 2024/25 financial year at Sebitloane Special School in Taung on Friday said, for they are strong and believe that gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity.
“This budget comes at a time when the general state of our economy is unsatisfactory. This has resulted in the decrease of income from grants we receive from other spheres of government and negatively impacted our ability to deliver services to our communities.
“In response to this situation, the municipal council has deliberated on, and approved our institutional cost containment strategy. This is meant to assist us to curb high costs of doing business and find innovative ways of increasing our revenue,” he said.
Gaoraelwe further said this indicates that they were going to be uncompromising in their efforts to collect revenue from different government entities and households. He added that the budget comes after extensive consultation with members of the communities over the last two weeks through mayoral imbizo.
“We remain committed to the realisation of our five key performance areas, such as basic service delivery and infrastructure development, municipal transformation and organisational development, Local Economic Development, municipal financial vitality and management and good governance and public participation.
“In this budget, I am able to announce that the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework proposes the appropriation of a total budget operating revenue of R360 million for 2024/2025 financial year,” said Gaoraelwe.
He said the municipality has a total operating expenditure of R356 million and a total capital expenditure of R72 million. Gaoraelwe said when compared to the 2023/2024 adjusted budget, the total operating revenue for the 2024/2025 financial year has increased by 4%.
“This is a result of an increase in allocation from the government sphere and annual increase in tariffs. The two outer years are expected to increase by 5% and decrease by 1% respectively. A Total Operating Expenditure is expected to decrease by 2% in most contracted services.
“This will also affect other recurring expenditure items in the 2024/25 financial year when compared to 2023/24 financial year. This is in the spirit of trying to contain costs and live within our means, however, without jeopardising the utmost need for service delivery,” he said.
Gaoraelwe said zero based budgeting is used as far as possible.
TaungDailyNews 