Appropriations Committee wants full cost breakdown for G20 Summit

Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations has written to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana to seek clarity on the cost of hosting the G20 Leaders’ Summit.  

The committee chairperson Mmusi Maimane says they have a constitutional obligation to monitor public spending and ensure that it’s done appropriately. 

The summit concluded yesterday with a joint declaration committing to multilateral co-operation. 

Maimane says South Africa has a history of inflating procurement costs when hosting events of such magnitude.

 “At the beginning of the financial year and last year, a question was asked about how much money was set up for the G20 and figures close to about R500 – 600 million were put on the table. So, we want to know if they were able to spend within that envelope or beyond that envelope because the budget pronouncements need to remain integral. The last place you want you want to be as a budgeting process is to pronounce that you are going to spend R600 million on something and then later you come back and say it was over a billion rand.”