FISCAL SUSTAINABILITY: NATIONAL TREASURY CALLS FOR INPUT ON TWO DRAFT BILLS

FISCAL SUSTAINABILITY: NATIONAL TREASURY CALLS FOR INPUT ON TWO DRAFT BILLS

• 22 October 2026
• National Treasury
• SA Legal Academy

National Treasury has released and called for public comments on two draft Bills mentioned in the 2026 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS). Although the notice concerned was gazetted shortly before Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana delivered this year’s MTBS in the National Assembly, the draft legislation itself only became available the following day. The deadline for input is 29 January 2027.

According to the Minister’s speech, the draft Public Finance Management & Related Laws Amendment Bill seeks to:

• clarify ‘the responsibilities of accounting officers, boards and executive authorities’
• strengthen National Treasury’s ‘ability to act against financial misconduct and persistent non-compliance’
• ‘protect accounting officers who make lawful decisions in good faith’, and
• strengthen ‘the governance of financially distressed public entities’.

The draft Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Amendment Bill seeks to:

• replace ‘rigid numerical rule’ with ‘fiscal sustainability’ as the standard underpinning public finance management at local level
• require each administration to:
  • ‘commit to its own fiscal objectives, consistent with the electoral mandate’
  • ‘report against it’ at each annual budgetary review, and
  • ‘explain any material deviation to Parliament’, and to
• empower the Financial & Fiscal Commission to ‘independently report on the consistency of the fiscal framework with the administration’s fiscal plan’.

Once finalised, passed by Parliament, enacted and operationalised, the two pieces of legislation are expected to:

• preserve flexibility ‘in changing economic conditions’
• strengthen ‘transparency, accountability and fiscal discipline’, and
• assist in ensuring that ‘developmental priorities and constitutional obligations are pursued at a pace … public finances can sustain’.

Please click the links below for more information:

• draft Public Finance Management & Related Laws Amendment Bill
• memorandum on the draft Bill’s objects
• comments template
• draft Local Government: Municipal Finance Management Amendment Bill
• memorandum on the draft Bill’s objects
• comments template
• Government Gazette notice
• 2026 MTBPS

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

Follow us on X @SALegalAcademy (you can also join us on LinkedIn and Facebook)

If you use this information in articles, reports and social media posts of your own, please acknowledge SA Legal Academy Policy Watch as your source

0 COMMENTS

LEAVE A COMMENT