Africa-Press – South-Africa. In a bid to promote fiscal discipline and curb wasteful expenditure in the province, the KwaZulu-Natal Treasury has introduced technology-driven solutions that will enhance transparency and efficient government spending.
This emerged on Tuesday when finance MEC Francois Rodgers on Tuesday introduced two initiatives: a digital supply chain management system and a financial data analysis centre that will help government departments to monitor their financial status.
Rodgers said the introduction of the digital procurement system, which has already been approved by the National Treasury, seeks to promote fair competition in government procurement and reduce wasteful spending, fraud, corruption and bias which is common with the manual system.
“I don’t think I need to tell you that whenever you look at fraud, corruption and wasteful expenditure it’s normally in supply chain management (SCM). That’s where we have the biggest problem and those problems are generally around human interaction with supply chain,” he said.
“This system will take the human factor out of the award of tenders and procurement. It’s an electronic system which will take the human factor out and therefore will have a huge effect on building a capable and ethical state.”
He added that the new system will give the National Treasury better oversight of the procurement processes.
“The electronic system will be monitored by National Treasury, each department will no longer be able to do its own procurement but it’s going to be the system that will control that procurement.”
Other benefits of the digital procurement system include:
Replacing all manual submissions and reducing human errors and the creation of audit trails, which will foster accountability at all levels.
The electronic system will also foster a culture of openness, empowering suppliers to compete on a level playing field, irrespective of their size or background, while ensuring targeted procurement from priority groups.
Reduction of irregular expenditure through effective planning, contract management, and compliance with SCM policies and regulations.
The system will allow for budget blocking, especially at the requisition creation stage.
The system will allow for price bench marking to ensure that the province obtains value for money and negotiates based on market prices.
The system will be piloted during the spending of the province’s R158bn budget in the current financial year, with full implementation expected from the beginning of 2026 to April 2027.
The set-up costs for the system are estimated to be between R3m and R5m, funded from the R20m saved by the provincial Treasury’s cost-cutting measures of unnecessary expenses during the seventh administration.
Rodgers added that KwaZulu-Natal is the first province to implement this procurement system.
“I think it’s a feather in our cap in that we are certainly trying to deal with fruitless and wasteful expenditure, fraud and corruption.”
Rodgers also announced that his department will establish a data analysis centre, which will feature a financial dashboard that will monitor cash flow and track expenditure and revenue collection, which is also a first for the province.
Highlighting the importance of the dashboard, Rodgers said it will be able to analyse human capital trends and live-monitor critical vacancy rates across government departments, as well as aiding government departments by determining accruals, debts and ensuring that invoices are paid within 30 days to suppliers.
This comes as the provincial government is faced with a financial crisis, which has seen most of the departments — mainly the front-line departments of social development, health and education — falling behind in their financial commitments to service providers.
Rodgers said this analysis of the provincial financial data will give MECs and management of all departments a hands-on view of the financial stability of their respective departments.
“Instead of expecting people to go through and read balance sheets which most people find rather tedious and boring, this will be a system where you can immediately see what it is that the department has spent, what remains in its account, what it owes to the suppliers and what the suppliers owe to it.
“This is one of the ways to try to get both officials and politicians to understand that if you don’t control the financial health of the department, you end up owing your suppliers billions of rand, which we also know is a problem.”
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