Social Welfare - Avoiding the poverty trap
When it comes to social welfare, finance minister Trevor Manuel's budget flirts with radical change but stops short of taking the plunge. A common observation is that SA has crept towards becoming a thriving welfare state in the past 10 years.
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Provincial Spending - More for health, schools
The budget allocates more than half of all nationally raised revenue to provinces (43%) and local government (7,6%). The R238,1bn allocated to the nine provinces in support of education, health, welfare services, agriculture and housing is 16% higher than in last year's budget.
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Criminal Justice - No more cop-outs
Faced with high crime and an underperforming police force, government is clearly not shy to throw money at the problem. Trevor Manuel is providing an extra R3,8bn for the safety & security department next year. This will allow the police to hire 8 500 more officers and raise the total number of police on SA's streets to 201 000 by March 2011.
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Housing - Cash is not the problem
With the strong focus on infrastructure spend in this year's budget, housing received little more than a passing mention. That is not surprising, considering the same issues, hurdles and headlines continue to afflict this department.
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Defence - Coming in to land
This year's budget all but bookends the controversial arms deal. The final payments for most of the armaments will be made some time next year and the country has already received the bulk of its equipment - if not the promised "off-set" investments.
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Peacekeeping - Defence budget stretched
SA is already one of the largest contributors to peace keeping missions on the African continent, and defence minister Mosiuoa Lekota fears that the defence force may have to stretch itself even further in coming years.
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Education - Building-block focus
For education specialist Graeme Bloch, finance minister Trevor Manuel has once again shown commitment to SA's people through his emphasis on human capital and social expenditure in general.
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Skills - Billions more for training
Finance minister Trevor Manuel says that under the leadership of deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, government has made considerable progress over the past two years in identifying priority skills and developing "innovative partnerships" to address these needs.
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Land Affairs - 'For land, not a chance'
Finance minister Trevor Manuel says that under the leadership of deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, government has made considerable progress over the past two years in identifying priority skills and developing "innovative partnerships" to address these needs.
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Health - Well on the way
The increase in funds dedicated to Aids programmes over the next three years underscores government's support for the five-year HIV/Aids plan introduced last year. The Actuarial Association of SA calculates there were 354 400 Aids-related deaths in 2007.
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