South Africa’s National Treasury will withhold funding from Johannesburg and dozens of other \u200bmunicipalities for at least a month over persistent \u200cand serious non-compliance with financial management regulations, officials said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The move comes before local elections on November \u200b4, in which Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic \u200bhub and largest municipality, is expected to \u2060be among the most hotly contested battlegrounds.<\/p>\n
Ogalaletseng \u200bGaarekwe, Treasury’s deputy director general of intergovernmental relations, told \u200ba news conference on Wednesday that 3.6 billion rand ($220 million) in funding would be withheld from Johannesburg in July.<\/p>\n
She \u200bstressed the move did not amount to \u200bplacing the city under administration.<\/p>\n
Around 69 municipalities will have a \u200cportion \u2060of their funding suspended until September unless they can show they have reduced wasteful expenditure by at least 25%, Treasury officials said.<\/p>\n
Finance Minister Enoch \u200bGodongwana has repeatedly \u200braised concerns \u2060about Johannesburg’s financial management.<\/p>\n
In May, the city approved a 97.1 billion rand ($5.98 \u200bbillion) budget that Treasury said was \u200bunfunded \u2060because planned spending exceeded realistic revenue projections and included a sharp increase in the municipal wage bill.<\/p>\n
Local media \u2060have \u200breported that the cash-strapped city \u200bhas only five and 17 days of cash reserves available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa’s National Treasury will withhold funding from Johannesburg and dozens of other \u200bmunicipalities for at least a month over persistent \u200cand serious non-compliance with financial management regulations, officials said on Wednesday. The move comes before local elections on November \u200b4, in which Johannesburg, South Africa’s economic \u200bhub and largest municipality, is expected to \u2060be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,30],"tags":[2241,122],"class_list":["post-21381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-southern-africa","tag-johannesburg","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21383,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21381\/revisions\/21383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}