With the Budget Speech due today, March 12, the Portfolio Committee on Transport has flagged underspending and irregular expenditure in 2023/2024 by the Department of Transport’s Civil Aviation Portfolio.
These financial shortfalls have reportedly contributed to maintenance challenges at South African airports.
According to the Portfolio Committee on Transport’s Budgetary Review and Recommendations Report (BRRR), published on October 24, 2024, in 2023/24, the DoT’s Civil Aviation Transport Programme spent only R305,4 million of the R317,5 million allocated to it. This indicates an under-expenditure of R12,1 million (or 3,8%). The underspending was attributed to several projects being deferred to the 2024/25 financial year.
Auditor-General findings
During the 2023/2024 period, organisations within the Civil Aviation Transport Programme, such as SACAA received unqualified “clean” audits. However, others, like the DoT, Acsa, and ATNS received qualified audit opinions with findings, revealed the BRRR.
The Auditor General of South Africa found that in 2023/2024, Acsa’s leadership did not exercise the appropriate level of responsibility regarding compliance with laws and regulations. Furthermore, it found that vacancies in senior management, as well as capacity constraints, affected skills in critical units.
ATNS faced similar challenges with severe personnel shortages leading to a decline in service satisfaction, according to the AGSA.
Irregular expenditure
“Acsa remains one of the largest contributors to irregular expenditure,” says last year’s BRRR.
According to the AG, in 2023/24, the DoT had a total irregular expenditure of R6,34 billion and Acsa accounted for R102 million of that. Irregular expenditure is defined as expenditure that does not follow the correct financial regulations - for example, not following proper tender processes. One of Acsa’s main reasons for irregular expenditure was found to be its procurement processes.
Fruitless, wasteful expenditure
The total closing balance of fruitless and wasteful expenditure in the Transport portfolio, for 2023/2024, was R991 million. One of the top three contributors to this total was Acsa, with R14 million. Fruitless and wasteful expenditure is defined as expenditure made in vain and that could have been avoided had reasonable care been exercised, such as paying interest on late payments and paying for services that were never rendered or that were cancelled at the last minute.
It has been alleged that Acsa has seriously underspent on maintenance.
Chris Hunsinger, DA spokesperson on Transport, speaking on RadioIslam earlier this month, claimed: “Over the past seven years, less than 25% of Acsa’s allocated budget for maintenance was actually spent on repairs and maintenance.”
He said that this was of huge concern given the recent fuel safety-valve failure at ORTIA. Hunsinger added there were concerns over Acsa’s medium and long-term provisions for fuel supply, for which the airport operator is responsible in terms of providing the fuel delivery equipment and maintaining it.
