South Africa’s (SA) Parliament is pressing Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana for details on the cost of hosting the recent G20 Leaders’ Summit.

The Standing Committee on Appropriations, chaired by Mmusi Maimane, has written to Godongwana as part of its constitutional duty to oversee public spending.

“The committee needs to know whether the summit was delivered within the allocated budget or exceeded it,” Maimane said. “At the start of the financial year, figures of roughly R500 to R600 million ($29 million to $35 million) were reported.

The last thing you want in the budgeting process is to commit to spending R600 million ($35 million) and then later announce the final cost as over a billion ($58 million) or even R2 billion ($116 million). That undermines the integrity of the process.”

The G20 Summit concluded yesterday with a joint declaration emphasising multilateral co-operation. Maimane said SA’s history of inflated procurement costs for large-scale events prompted the committee’s scrutiny.

–ChannelAfrica–