The eThekwini Municipality has once again achieved the highest collection rate in the country for 2013/2014. However, more importantly, there was even more improvement in the collection rate. In 2012/2013 the Municipality achieved an excellent collection rate of 103% and this has improved to an outstanding 105% in 2013/2014. This has been due mainly to the strict adherence to the strong Credit Control and Debt Collection Policy of the Municipality.
Mayor James Nxumalo said, “I want to thank the executive in fully supporting our the development and implementation of the Rates Policy and the Debt Collection and Credit Control Policy and the City Manager and his team for their innovativeness around revenue collection. They are truly leaders in the country in this regard and have been sharing their expertise internationally.”
The Chairperson of the Finance & Procurement Committee, Councillor Fawzia Peer, thanked ratepayers for their commitment to pay their bills and their responsibilities towards the City.
Mr Krish Kumar, the Chief Financial Officer, stated that “This bodes well for the funding of service delivery in the City. This will reduce our reliance on borrowings to fund the City’s capital programme. This also strengthens the City’s credit rating which is already the highest in the municipal sector. This strong financial standing positions the city well for a bond issuance in the near future.”
The capital spend of the Municipality has been good in the past financial years and was in line with the spends of other Metros. However, the Municipality was not satisfied with a capital spend of less than 100%. Mayor Nxumalo said, “We have achieved a capital spend of 105% which is outstanding. We would like to commend our Officials and Councillors on their commitment towards service delivery to our people and uplifting their quality of life, especially with regard to housing. It is also interesting to note that Cape Town’s capital spend is 80.6%, as reported in the media.”
The City Manager, Sbu Sithole, reported that, “It took a lot of work and innovativeness to achieve this. The key interventions were our weekly service delivery meetings and our weekly meetings to monitor the Top 150 capital projects. We now look forward to keeping up the momentum and maintaining such an exceptional level of service delivery.”
DCM, Mr Kumar added, “The key is good planning. We introduced procurement scheduling to ensure that all SCM requirements were in the system at an early stage to avoid delays. An electronic contract request tracking system, a centralised contract register to monitor the timeous renewal of annual supply contracts, and improvements in our turnaround times on SCM processes were also effective tools used.”
Councillor Peer indicated that, “This is very encouraging in terms of the financial health of the city and its future delivery of basic services, housing and growth related infrastructure. It further enhances the Municipality’s reputation as one of the best run cities.”
International Union of Architects Congress – UIA2014