Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has announced that funds will be diverted from other government programmes in an effort to tackle the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
This comes after President Cyril Ramaphosa on Sunday announced that due to the severity of the virus and its rapid spreading, government will make funding available to capacitate the sectors dealing with the national response to the Coronavirus outbreak.
“We stand ready to do two things: one, there are funds available immediately in the national disaster fund, which are immediately available. I won’t mention amounts should prices change.”
Secondly, as the situation develops, government will need to set aside further funding and it will have to reduce programmes throughout government.
National Treasury officials are in contact with financial sector regulatory authorities that report to the finance minister in order to make sure that there is a coordinated approach. This relates to the banking and financial sectors.
“The key issue here is to say that we should never have a situation where we say we are unable to procure testing facilities or whatever is necessary.
“At the end of the day activities have to be paid for,” said Mboweni.
He said various structural arrangements were already in place.
“The National Treasury itself has to be organised, they already have a national treasury coordinating working group which is chaired by one of the DDGs and meet as regularly as they see fit,” he said.
There is also a structural arrangement between the Department of Health and the National Treasury. They too will communicate and meet as regularly as possible.
The Minister of Finance and the MECs of Finance will coordinate whatever needs to be done financially.
“The MECs will coordinate with their MECs for health, who will be coordinating with the Health Minister. These are structural arrangements to make sure that we are organized and not haphazard,” he said.