Cabinet held its last ordinary meeting of the year in Pretoria on Wednesday.

Among the many issues discussed was the importance of the 2010 Fifa World Cup draw in Cape Town on Friday, acting government spokesperson Baby Tyawa said in a statement on Thursday.

Representatives from 31 countries were descending on the city, making the event the defining moment for South Africa to treat the world to the most memorable football event ever to be held on the African continent.

Cabinet also commended the work done on the turn-around strategy for local government by the Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Ministry. It approved the proposed action plan to fix local governance problems, to ensure it would deliver.

The meeting received the "close out" report on the National Macro-Organisation of the State project. To date the project had achieved its objective of facilitating macro organisation in the new dispensation.

From now on the various departments would finalise "residual matters" with the support of the public service and public works departments and National Treasury. Minister in the Presidency for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Collins Chabane would continue to provide guidance and oversight where necessary.

Cabinet also noted the positive increase in a number of unqualified opinions by the Auditor-General from 29 entities in 2007/08 to 55 entities in 2008/09, signalling an improvement of the audit outcomes by national and provincial institutions, including the timeous tabling of their 2008/9 annual reports.

"Government is pleased with this development, which is a clear indication that we are making progress. However, it still remains concerned with the departments and entities with persistent poor audit outcomes."

The draft policy proposal on the implementation of a National Health Insurance scheme remained a work in progress.

The meeting also agreed to the establishment of an inter-ministerial committee on social security and retirement reforms, which would be convened by Social Development Minister Edna Molewa, with other relevant ministers, to oversee the process and report to Cabinet by the end of February 2010.

Cabinet noted Eskom's revised price application to the National Energy Regulator of South Africa and also approved the inter-ministerial committee on energy, which would convene to consider the electricity challenge facing the country.

The integrated resource plan was approved. The process of alignment with the Eskom multi-year price determination application had been concluded.

The plan was in accordance with the Electricity Regulation Act to provide Nersa with the necessary policy framework within which the 2010 to 2012 Eskom tariff application would be determined.