The City of Johannesburg has concluded a successful three-day, multicity investor roadshow to present our annual organisational and financial performance.
I am happy to announce that investors agree - Johannesburg has good growth prospects - and confidence remains high given our broad tax base operating in a large, diversified economic market. Furthermore, austerity measures have yielded results translating into a 1% increase in total expenditure, demonstrating our commitment to fiscal discipline.
Coupling this positive sentiment is the overall support for our financial strategy, aligned to bringing transformative change. Titled Diphetogo, our plan is to make a real difference for the residents of Johannesburg by narrowing our focus to the most critical needs of our residents.
This means that the City will focus on rapidly attending to our housing and infrastructure backlog, the security of supply and expansion of our network of electricity, water and sanitation and also looking into the quality of our road network and public safety.
To date our Diphetogo achievements include:
• Replacing 45.4 kilometers of sewer pipe (surpassing the target of 33.5 kilometers);
• Electrifying 2167 units (structures) in informal settlements;
• Delivering 1159 social housing units;
• Creating 1362 jobs in the waste industry;
• Supporting 8978 SMME’s;
• Facilitating R8.69bil worth of investment and business transactions;
• Creating 19 449 EPWP opportunities;
• Introducing electronic health care records on 64 clinics across the City;
• Resurfacing 301km of roads; and,
• Achieving an Unqualified Audit opinion with 4 Municipal Entities receiving Clean Audits.
Johannesburg remains South Africa’s biggest and most regionally dominant city in terms of population, size and reach of the economy. While it has a dynamic and diversified city economy, these recognitions are not without challenges. Weakening economic performance and population growth in Johannesburg has left unemployment and poverty levels high.
These challenges have had a direct impact on the City’s ability to collect revenue which is critical to self-fund our capex projects. In recognition of this, we have reviewed our collections strategies – maintaining that benefits should flow to those who need it most - while optimising our collection through our, soon to be announced, integrated debt collection strategy which will see, among others:
• Debtor profiling, where the City will analyse debtors in terms of their payment profile and where necessary use the services of the Credit Bureau and to blacklist consistent defaulters;
• Implement credit control action on pre-paid meters, which will see the City deduct other monies owed before supplying electricity;
• Excluding Joburg-based corporates from doing business with the City if their companies and/or directors’ personal accounts are in arrears; and,
• An aggressive targeted collections drive to bring all account balances to be within 60 days.
The City’s stance is clear: all property owners must pay for what they consume. For those who are struggling, we have provided a range of account related benefits and rebates under the City’s ESP (Expanded Social Package) programme.
Cllr Funzela Ngobeni
Member of the Mayoral Committee for Finance
City of Johannesburg
For media queries:
Kutlwano Olifant
Stakeholder Manager: MMC for Finance
Landline: 011 628 4508
Mobile: 081 434 7417
KutlwanoO@joburg.org.za
