Minister in the Presidency Collins Chabane on Friday cast doubt on whether the ministerial performance contracts that President Jacob Zuma vaunted in his State of the Nation address would be made public.

Chabane told a media briefing that the delivery targets set for ministers would be public knowledge, but responded hesitantly when asked what penalties would apply to members of the executive who failed to achieve them.

"It is the President's call to see what then happens," said Chabane, who is Minister in the Presidency for Performance Monitoring and Evaluation.

"The system is not necessarily based on punitive measures," he added, and suggested that failure to meet targets would rather lead to a conclusion that "other action will have to be taken".

Chabane said that government had translated its priorities into 12 required and measurable "outcomes" which would form the basis for the president's performance contracts with his ministers.

It was not clear whether these would be "seen" by the public, he said.

In a speech widely criticised as lacking substance, Zuma held up the introduction of the contracts as proof of his administration's eagerness to speed up implementation.

Chabane said that the government believed it was implementation, and not policy, that had proved a stumbling block in terms of service delivery and that the monitoring system would be up and running by the end of the current financial year.