Key takeaways:
- A mere 8% of South Africa’s municipalities had an unqualified (clean) audit in the 2018/19 financial year.
- Unauthorised expenditure is higher at local government level than at the national level.
- Irregular expenditure is higher at the national level than at local government level.
- Fruitless and wasteful expenditure is also higher at the national level than at local government level.
- Together, unauthorised/irregular/fruitless and wasteful expenditure at local and national government levels accounts for about 10% of the government’s procurement budget and 57% of the police and defence budget.