Spending that delivers tangible benefits

Earlier this year, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni announced that from 1 July, a zero-based budgeting (ZBB) approach would be applied to all government departments.

If implemented, this would force all government departments to use a method of budgeting in which expenses need to be justified for each new budgeting period. ZBB means that each government department’s budget starts from scratch, and thus questions every element incorporated into the budget. ZBB, which was developed in the 1970s, was first used by consumer goods companies, but is now applied across most industries.