With the sluggish economy and limited resources, it was time to ensure that every cent spent by the City of Johannesburg is accounted for and value extracted from it.

This was the sentiment shared by stakeholders on Tuesday, 3 March 2020, who attended the Roundtable Discussion on the Annual Report, which was organised by the City's Municipal Public Accounts Committee (MPAC).

“We need stakeholders to be frank with us and tell us where we are going wrong as the City so that we can get clean reports even for our entities," said the Chairperson of MPAC Cllr Thandi Nontenja.

The South African Local Government's (Salga) Maphefo Mgadi said her organisation was ready and willing to assist the City to strengthen its internal audit capacity.

“Some of the recommendations Salga has made to the City, include that there was a need to assess and strengthen the capacity of internal audit to ensure that the City is given early warnings on non-implementation of Auditor General Findings," said Mgadi.

She said Salga was also willing to take part at the City's forums as observers such as MPAC's subcommittee.

Dr Thina Nzo, a Senior Researcher at the Public Affairs Research Institute, said among other things of concern was the inadequate procurement control management, state officials who still want to do business with the state and a lack of performance management of contracts.

“One of the interesting things we discovered is that the City was starting to have decrease in wasteful expenditure, but at the same time unauthorised and irregular expenditure was still a problem," said Nzo.

According Nzo, MPAC must start to build capacity to be able to investigate unauthorized and irregular expenditure.

The Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce of Industry's President, Jackie Mpondo-Hendricks, said her organisation was committed to strengthening relationship with the City. “If the City does well, the business in Johannesburg will also do well," she said.