NPA budget insufficient to deal with corruption: Lamola

CAPE TOWN - Justice and Correctional Services Minister Ronald Lamola has again emphasised the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) and its Investigating Directorate's (ID) lack of funds to deal with corruption and State capture cases.

Lamola says while the budget has increased by 5.39% in the medium term, it is still inadequate to deal with the country’s many corruption cases.

The minister was responding to a written question by Democratic Alliance leader John Steenhuisen on the annual budget of the NPA and specifically, the ID to fight corruption.

Steenhuisen asked Lamola whether the budget of the NPA and ID had been increased or supplemented to have a more effective crime fighting operation.

Lamola said the NPA budget allocation increased over the medium term, from R4,9 billion to R5,7 billion to capacitate the NPA to deal with State capture cases and the fight against corruption.

He said the increase was as a result of the R1.3 billion additional funding allocated to the NPA during the 2022 medium-term budget.

Lamola said, however, that the increase was against a background of an “inadequate budget” where the ratio of compensation to operational costs was 85:15.

He added that the ID's budget allocation increased by 11.60% to R308 million over the Medium Term Expenditure Framework period.

However, this increase is below inflation - which effectively means the budget has decreased in real terms.