Legal and institutional measures: key requirements for effective municipal budget oversight

Abstract

In South Africa, municipal councils are accorded a legal status and authority of a deliberative legislative body. This is considered critical for the municipal council to establish appropriate structures, processes and systems for effective oversight, particularly, oversight of budget execution. However, indications are that, the current legal and institutional measures need to be strengthened to enable municipal council to exercise oversight of the budget execution. Literature review conducted in this study highlighted executive dominance, lack of technical capacity, lack of access to relevant information and partisan attitude as key factors constraining elected representatives in general from exercising oversight of budget execution. In addition, the review identified institutional and behavioural criteria as the normative framework within which to evaluate the effectiveness of the current legal and institutional measures for oversight of budget execution in South African municipalities.