Addressing inefficiencies through improved budgeting

To consolidate government’s unsustainable debt trajectory, the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni, announced during the Supplementary Budget Speech in June that National Treasury would explore the implementation of a zero-based budgeting approach. However, not many details were provided on how exactly this would be achieved, especially given the time and capacity constraints associated with implementing it within a budget cycle. With this budget approach, government departments would have to start from a zero-base and justify their expenditure anew every financial year. Therefore, the budget for the current year was not simply an extension