Opposition parties have delivered a scathing assessment of the Eastern Cape’s 2025/2026 financial budget, accusing it of failing to attract new investments, create jobs and address the needs of the province’s people.
Finance MEC Mlungisi Mvoko tabled his budget at the legislature in Bhisho on Tuesday.
DA MPL Malcolm Figg said Mvoko’s speech was not inspiring.
“The MEC gave a lot of information, which was just a lot of figures, but in terms of how the MEC will move the needle to get jobs, we did not get anything.
“We do not hear much about investment. There was a promise of a R200bn investment, and we are working on it this year, but he did not give a figure of how much has come through,” Figg said.
Mvoko said in his speech that investment pledges were at various stages and the sixth administration had a strong baseline of pledges of up to R200bn.
Figg said while Mvoko had touted new jobs created in various sectors, 41.9% of people remained unemployed.
He said the MEC did not lay down a road map on how new jobs would be created.
“We want to know what is going to be done about the bloated salary bill.
“We get an allocation of R82bn for an equitable share, but of that, 63% goes to salaries.
“Instead of tilting the favour of funds for service delivery, it rather goes to servicing cadres,” he said.
Figg said that while the province was taking advantage of the roads to be built by Sanral, it had no plan to deal with the backlog of maintaining existing infrastructure.
EFF MPL Simthembile Madikizela said the budget lacked substance and failed to respond to the urgent needs of the province.
“It is a repetition of what has been said in previous speeches.
“There is no effort to attract investment in ensuring that the province can generate revenue because the budget is based on grants which have guidelines on how they can be spent,” he said.
The province received transfers from the national government totalling R97.6bn, consisting of R82.4bn in equitable share and R15.2bn in conditional grants.
“The province cannot respond to its problems.
“As things stand, we have at least 1,092 ambulances that are with mechanics as a result of the transversal contracts that direct all vehicles must be fixed with an approved service provider.
“That is costing the province because now we have no fleet.
“But if we had our revenue, we could intervene on such issues,” Madikizela said.
UDM MPL Lenox Gaehler said the budget should have tried to focus more on local government.
“Especially with roads which are gone in municipalities.
“We cannot talk of being a tourism destination as the roads are bad and crime is high.
“It seems when the province talks of tourism, it ends in Gqeberha.
ANC MPL and provincial legislature chief whip Loyiso Magqashela said the speech was in line with premier Oscar Mabuyane’s state of the province address.
“The economic sector, social, education and human settlements are well captured as well as skills development which targets the youth,” he said.
“Regardless whether there were no major increases [for departments], the MEC said he has only made it possible for the oversight institution, which is the legislature, to have enough resources ... because they have to provide oversight to the budgets allocated to the other departments,” he said.
The legislature budget was increased from R706m to R750m.
The Herald