Reports on under-spending in government departments have created the impression that they do not have the capacity to spend more resources. More recent figures and data on provinces are not available. Almost 80 per cent of under-spending came from just four departments Welfare , Health , Trade and Industry and Public Works . In every one of these cases, the programmes that displayed under-spending aimed at providing funds to small businesses or NGOs. In contrast, the big social services had no problem spending their entire budget through their normal delivery systems.
Various factors inhibit the ability of departments to spend their budgets effectively.
They include excessive reliance on private partners, systemic weaknesses in conditional grants, lack of appropriate management skills, the procurement system, and the broader effects of fiscal restraint. A key problem in the spending of many government departments is the question of sustainability.