Understanding the impact of financial sustainability on South African municipalities

Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Understanding the impact of financial sustainability on South African municipalities
 
Creator Mbulawa, Abe
 
Subject — Financial condition; service delivery solvency; good financial governance; fiscal framework; fiscal distress; municipal sustainability; audit outcomes.
Description This article acknowledges the lack of skills and poor financial governance within South African municipalities but argues that these factors are an insufficient explanation of their increasing fiscal distress, which was found at over 90% by 2016. It employs the concept of financial condition to construct an econometric function for South African local government. This financial condition function confirms that the fiscal framework of South African local government is distressed. The article further concludes that as service delivery improves, so does the fiscal distress. This applies even to municipalities that receive audit outcomes without material findings. As an illustration, the article uses the collective debt incurred by municipalities to Eskom – the energy utility company. The article argues that it is mathematically impossible to settle this debt within the current local government fiscal framework. The conclusion confirms the importance of constructing the financial condition function as an enabler for improved local government financial health.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2019-10-30
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/td.v15i1.656
 
Source The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa; Vol 15, No 1 (2019); 15 pages 2415-2005 1817-4434
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/656/1093 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/656/1092 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/656/1094 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/656/1091
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2019 Abe Mbulawa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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