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The South African government has taken note of the Democratic Alliance's media statement suggesting that it has embarked on fruitless and wasteful expenditure.

According to the Public Finance Management Act, fruitless and wasteful expenditure means expenditure which was made in vain and which could have been avoided had reasonable care been exercised.

The Auditor-General has the sole legal responsibility of auditing and certifying all expenditure and has as a consequence of this legal responsibility the authority to determine what expenditure is fruitless and wasteful. The auditing process which could have informed the figures given by the DA only starts in May 2010 and it is therefore government's view that the DA's statement is irresponsible and misleading as unaudited information and figures were presented.

Some of the figures date as far back as 2006 and the DA is therefore inaccurate in stating that the so-called fruitless expenditure is as recent as July 2009.