House Chair,
The ACDP has taken note of the BRRR report on National Treasury and institutions and entities in the Finance portfolio. We are also grateful that the country was removed from the FATF grey listing. A particular issue that related in that regard was the prosecution of terrorism-related crimes and money laundering cases. So, it is very important that whilst we’ve been removed from the grey list, we make sure that the improvements that have been taken in regarding such prosecutions are maintained.
We have also taken note of the Auditor-General’s comprehensive audit review of the finance cluster which highlighted steady improvement in audit outcomes compared to previous years. There are, however, several recurring governance and compliance weaknesses in certain entities, notably within the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) and two other entities: The PIC, the Land Bank Insurance Company and the Land Bank Life Insurance Company had material findings on performance information. This is quite a serious deterioration from previous years.
Other speakers have alluded to the severe concerns with the PIC, which invests funds on behalf of government employees: R3 trillion. There are multiple challenges regarding the PIC—it can’t be permissible to lose a a few billion rand here and there. These are pensioners’ funds and a high level of stewardship of these funds is required. The ACDP welcomes the fact that they will remain under continued oversight—from Parliament in particular—especially when it comes to investment governance processes, due-diligence practices, and the valuation and impairment methodology for unlisted investments.
The ACDP will support the report.
I thank you.
