Poor Municipal Billing Hinders Eastern Cape Revenue Collection

Poor municipal billing system and property ownership challenges have been identified as the biggest challenge that hinders Eastern Cape municipalities from collecting revenue.

This emerged during the last day of the Revenue Management Indaba hosted by the provincial CoGTA Department in East London in the Eastern Cape. Government departments have been flagged as the biggest culprits for not paying rates and taxes to the municipalities in the province.

Government departments debt to municipalities is totaling R2.2 billion as at the end of January this year. The Department of Public Works and Land Reform are the biggest contributors of this debt, followed by the Education and Health Departments.

The provincial Department of Cooperative Governance says to capacitate municipalities to be able to sustain themselves through revenue collection, there needs to be forged relationships between all stakeholders concerned.

"The challenges we face in municipalities is data management, there are some issues with credibility, in as far as government departments are concerned is the prioritization of payments and the identification of state lands has been a challenge in ownership between the three national departments. The solutions we are coming up with is capacitate municipalities in order to deal with data management credibility challenges and forging a relationship with SALGA, provincial treasury and COGTA," says Babalwa Mbangeleli, Eastern Cape Cogta Deputy Director: Municipal Finance Development.