DEVELOPMENT PLANNING: NO SIGN OF FRAMEWORK BILL DESPITE HIGH HOPES

DEVELOPMENT PLANNING: NO SIGN OF FRAMEWORK BILL DESPITE HIGH HOPES

• 17 July 2023
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

A media statement issued recently by the National Planning Commission refers to a ‘National Development Planning Framework Bill’. According to the statement, Deputy President Paul Mashatile has been entreated to apply ‘the weight of his office’ to Parliament on the apparent assumption that this will ensure the Bill’s ‘speedy passage’ through that august institution.

Yet no Bill by that name has even been released in draft form for public comment, let alone tabled in Parliament. Perhaps the Commission is thinking of a draft Integrated Planning Framework Bill gazetted in May 2018 for stakeholder input.

Whatever the case, according to the statement a document variously referred to as the ‘Bill’ and ‘draft Bill’ will seek to:

• ‘embed and institutionalise a coherent planning system across government and inclusive of the broader citizenry’
• ‘centralise the National Development Plan (NDP) in the long-term planning processes of both the state and government’, and
• formalise the Commission and the Department of Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation as ‘key’, ‘permanent … planning instruments’.

This is noting that ‘only such an integrated approach to planning can lead to better service delivery and the advancement of the development goals of NDP’.

In May 2018, SAnews reported that the Bill was ‘intrinsically linked to Cabinet’s decision to mandate the Department of Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation and National Treasury to develop an annual budget prioritisation framework’. Known at the time as ‘the Mandate Paper’, one such document was published the same year. However, there is no evidence of a 2019 iteration or anything similar for each ensuing year.

• media statement
• draft 2018 Integrated Planning Framework Bill
• SAnews article
• 2018 ‘mandate paper’

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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