The City of Johannesburg has for the first time in history collected a record of R3.6 billion for rates and service charges for the month of August 2018.
This constitutes collection of R400 million more than the budgeted revenue.
Over the past four months there has been sustained improvement in the City’s billing and collections with average monthly collections of R3.3billion from May to August.
The past administration’s highest average monthly collection reached R2,8 billion by comparison.
This performance has been possible due to the implementation of a focused, multi-disciplinary approach to billing and collection management, under the leadership of MMC for Finance, Cllr Funzela Ngobeni.
The City remains focused on targeting those who have not paid for rates and services, whilst clearly having the means to have done so. The success of Operation Buya Mthetho in this regard has been excellent, collecting over R707 million over the past 7 months. Further to this, the City has tackled its debtors book, which stood at over R18 billion, and this is now producing results. The City has also focused its credit management work on the largest power and water users, which ensures a higher return of revenue for these efforts.
These efforts are critical to ensure that law-abiding residents, who pay their bills routinely, are treated with respect while the City focusses its efforts on those who can but do not pay. It can never happen again that those who pay are pushed further and further while so many people who can pay simply do not.
The City has previously communicated its arrangement that residents who have objected to their property valuations, should continue to pay their previous rates amount along with the current service charges. This means that the record revenue levels over the past months will not come down as objections are resolved.
In developing our budget for the 2018/19 financial year, the City made a strategic decision to focus on improving revenue performance as this is a critical contributor towards realizing Diphetogo – real change for our people. This requires massive infrastructural and social backlogs to be addressed through maximizing revenue collection.
The fact that the City has achieved a consistent growth in revenue over the past 4 months bodes well for an adjustments budget which can see more being funneled into critical service delivery needs of our communities.
Further to this, stabilizing the precarious financial position inherited in the City requires that the City achieves a strong cash-backed surplus by the end of the financial year.
With over 85% of the City’s operating budget derived from its own revenue generation, our ability to address the service delivery failures that plague our residents is wholly dependent on revenue collection.
We must put to bed those dooms day prophets who have continued to predict the ‘imminent’ financial collapse of the City. It has even been the false premise on which the ANC has based their flawed notion that fresh elections should be called in Johannesburg. It is now time for them to come to terms with the financial and corrupt mess they left behind and the improvements that are now being achieved.
Already the City has reported that it’s spend of the capital budget reached 91% and 98.5% of its spending on infrastructure grants by the end of the 2017/18 financial year.
The multi-party government does not regard even these improvements to be good enough, and will continue to strive for excellence in the City of Johannesburg.
I would like to express my most sincere appreciation to the law abiding residents of our City and assure them that our efforts in combatting fraud and corruption will see our expenditure directly benefitting the residents of Johannesburg and not government officials.
Cllr Herman Mashaba
Executive Mayor
City of Joburg
Media Enquiries:
Luyanda Mfeka
Director: Mayoral Communications
Office of the Executive Mayor
City of Johannesburg
Tel: 011 407 6727
Cellular: 076 171 5978
Email: luyandam@joburg.org.za
