Capital expenditure by public sector institutions has grow steadily despite SA’s economic challenges‚ Statistician-General Pali Lehohla said on Wednesday.
"In terms of what the vision for SA is‚ we have the National Development Plan and what we need to do is test our spending against the goals of the NDP," Lehohla said.
"While the economy has not been doing terribly well and is in recession‚ capex has been increasing steadily over a period of time‚" he told a briefing in Tshwane‚ according to a government statement.
Lehohla was speaking at the Statistics SA release on its Capital Expenditure by the Public Sector 2016 report‚ which showed that total capital expenditure by public sector institutions increased R19bn from R265bn in 2015 to R284bn in 2016.
Capital expenditure increased on new construction works‚ land and existing buildings‚ transport equipment and "other" fixed assets. It decreased on plant‚ machinery and equipment, as well as leased assets and investment property.
The 2016 report showed the largest share of the R284bn was spent by public corporations, at R138bn (or 49%).
Eskom and Transnet were major contributors to public corporations capex in 2015 at R73bn and R34bn‚ respectively.
The power utility spent R70bn on the power generation projects at Kusile‚ Medupi and Ingula power stations.
Transnet spent R11.1bn on the expansion of infrastructure and equipment. Another R18.5bn was spent on maintaining capacity in the rail and ports divisions.
The second-largest share of capex spending was by municipalities at R66bn (23%). Municipalities were followed by provincial governments at R36bn‚ national government at R18bn‚ and extra-budgetary accounts at R17bn.
Higher education institutions had the smallest share of the total capex by public institutions at R7bn (2%).
The University of Mpumalanga capex was spent on the completion of four new buildings as part of the phase two for the 2017 academic year‚ and five new buildings for the 2018 academic year.
Stellenbosch University spent its capex on the construction and renovation of non-residential buildings on campus.
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