South Africa is unleashing its own version of the Elon Musk-founded US Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut programs deemed as wasteful or not aligned with government policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A mechanism called Targeted and Responsible Savings, or TARS, will be established to \u201cidentify and remove low-priority or underperforming programs from the budget to reduce aggregate expenditure,\u201d the National Treasury said in new spending guidelines published on Wednesday. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where appropriate, funding will be reallocated to more important budget priorities, the Treasury said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis initiative forms part of the broader budget reform agenda aimed at ensuring that the national budget reflects South Africa\u2019s most pressing needs and highest-impact interventions,\u201d according to the guidelines, which are the result of a review process started last year to improve budget efficiency and reduce wasteful expenditure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
TARS will identify a list of programs based on historical and current performance, as well as alignment with the the government\u2019s development plans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once the TARS list is approved by the cabinet, each program will face a spending review that may lead to \u201cde-implementation\u201d in the 2026\/27 fiscal year, according to the guidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Departments subject to spending reviews will have to identify potential efficiency gains and savings, or demonstrate that the projects in question are delivering value for money, to escape the axe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCabinet might choose to close, scale back, or, in some cases, retain programs with efficiency enhancements, with the aim to redirect the funds toward current spending pressures,\u201d the document states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa is unleashing its own version of the Elon Musk-founded US Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, to cut programs deemed as wasteful or not aligned with government policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":735077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[23214,23213,2342],"class_list":["post-832789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-doge","tag-tars","tag-treasury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832791,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832789\/revisions\/832791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}