Programme Director,
Honourable Members,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen

We have reached the end of the First Parliamentary Budget Office Conference under the theme – “the role of African Parliaments Fiscal oversight: contribution to the African development agenda”. My task is simple as I have been requested to provide some closing remarks. We have had over the past two days lively and stimulating debates.

Our day to day operations will be guided by the will to ensure that our development in Africa is driven by the people and relies on its people, especially its women and youth, and caring for children. We further aspire towards a continent with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, shared values and ethics. Together, based on the ideals of Pan-Africanism and the vision of Africa’s Renaissance we will turn our continent into a strong, united and influential global player and partner.

This is first conference of African PBOs, and amongst the first good example of institutions and cooperation. We are building for transparency and accountability to promote good governance and economic development. It is not enough to call for a strong legislative sector in South Africa or in the continent without addressing the reason for this need; it is not enough to identify a need – it is important to understand how the need must be addressed and how to sustain and improve whatever mechanism we may develop to address this need. It is good to talk about the reduction of poverty and inequality; it is even better when we build institutions that can secure the future.

We in the legislature supported the creation of parliamentary budget offices to provide us with independent, objective and professional advice and analysis on fiscal matters, particularly national budgets and government spending.

We must not be able to hold the executive to account but fail to self- assess our own fiscal and general administrative and policy decisions. When we say to our citizen “we hold the purse-strings” we must be also be trusted to spend wisely.

Our expectations of the capacity and support of the PBO’s go well beyond the testing of the validity of the GDP and the revenue predictions and fiscal spending implications. We require support with reading budgets. We want information and advice on how fiscal decisions relate building democracy and economic development in Africa and all its countries.

South Africa has a national plan for the first time in her history. The NDP is an attempt to look at development uniformly across the provinces. The plan identifies the challenges of education, health, shelter, safety, decent work and inclusive growth path. It sets goals for infrastructure development, rural development and land reform. It call for reform and improvement in local government. The NDP is alive to issues of gender equality, racial disparities and environmentally sustainable development.

We have asked our PBO to help assess the progress with regard to NDP outcomes and how well government is planning/or expending. Early as it is, the patterns are interesting and can be used to guide future spending.

South Africa started off by trying the welfare of the majority through the provision of shelter, water, electricity, sanitation, education, primary health and social grants. This has made an important impact, the impact of global recession and the slow recovery have had serious and negative impact on our country – reversing the gender, racial and the urban/ rural divides. This is why we take agenda 20163 seriously – it talks to our vision of a people driven, inclusive growth and sustainable development towards an integrated African continent built on our shared values, common heritage and strong cultural identity.

Our job as public representatives is to balance the great needs in our society with the available resources. These resources include the revenue as governments can raise and the debts that can be incurred. There are many different views on the balance. As public representatives we may be called upon to make a judgement based on our specific circumstances.

The important thing is that as nations we must agree on the “balances” and we work to ensure that we are accountable for every cent and that we stretch every cent as for as we can go in the interest of the people.
The task of the PBO is to help us with the process of prioritising and monitoring and evaluating. We must therefore establish and resource PBO’s to ensure that structures and processes are permanent and entrenched.

To our colleagues in Africa and across the world. We say we are together tied together building strong institutions for stability, peace and democracy threaded together by good governances.

We fully support the development of a network for African PBO’s to learn from one another and to support one another.The African PBO network will hold its next meeting before the end of 2016.

Brothers and sisters thank you very much your active participation in this conference.

I thank you