Municipal Financial Transparency
Municipal financial transparency in South Africa is crucial because it enables citizens to hold local government accountable for how public funds are spent, helping to prevent corruption, mismanagement and wasteful expenditure. Clear and accessible financial reporting builds public trust and ensures that limited resources are directed towards service delivery such as water, sanitation, refuse removal, electricity, and roads.
In October 2025 COMPACT hosted a webinar on the theme Know Where your Money Goes: Tracking Municipal Spending. Speakers from National Treasury gave presentations on conditional grants as well as on tracking municipal spending through Section 71 reports.
The GoMuni portal is an important initiative by National Treasury to promote municipal financial transparency. On the GoMuni website there are provincial links, municipal data, state of municipal finances etc. National Treasury publishes local government Medium Term Revenue and Expenditure Framework (MTREF) information on an annual basis and the Section 71 reports give an account of actual revenue collection and spending by municipalities per quarter against their budgeted figures.
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