By Matome Sebelebele

GOVERNMENT has expressed concerns at the findings of a United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) report, which authorities say contain contradictions and incorrect facts in some instances.

The analytic report, titled South Africa: Human Development report 2003: Unlocking people's creativity criticised certain areas in government's policy-making processes, implementation and administrative goals to achieve sustainable development.

Released yesterday, the UNDP report says government's failure to speed up socio-economic programmes as well as infrastructure and service delivery were due to what it called lack of quality and strategic decision making framework in some areas, which the report said, had a negative impact on government's ability to fast track its programmes.

The report also suggests among others, that wrong and unreliable data collection by departments such as health, education and social development around projected figures on population growth, HIV and AIDS infections, tend to frustrate decision-making organs in planning, funding and implementation projects.

However, government says the report failed to clearly highlight processes, methods or ways to overcome current deficiencies.

In other areas the report said South Africa needed major economic policy changes to overcome entrenched inequality and persistent poverty, which were ignored by the apartheid regime. It said the government's policy response of the past decade appeared to have been merely epiphenomenal.

It claims the restructuring of government management after 1999 did not guarantee good integration; an assertion, which authorities rejected, saying such an observation underplayed the importance of the new Cabinet Committee system and the Forum of South African Directors-General (FOSAD) as well as the cluster system.

"There can be no doubt that these systems have contributed to more realistic planning and coordination, and better monitoring of progress in the development and implementation of national policy," said government.

Authorities also expressed reservations at an observation that there was a major gap between policy and its implementation, in respect of both broad policy intent and the implementation of legislation.

"In contrast, the findings of the Ten-year Review indicate that the first years of the democratic dispensation were mainly meant to focus on the introduction of a new constitutional and legislative framework." Government published the Towards the Ten Year Review last year, outlining its achievements during the past decade after the country had attained freedom and democracy.

Consistent with this, President Thabo Mbeki recently committed his new administration and Cabinet to implementing policies, which he said, were designed over the past decade to further ensure sustainable development and a change in people's lives.

Though acknowledging the strides made to redress the past imbalances, the report calls for revised socio-economic policies, which government says bear no reference to the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF).

The report emphasises the great advantage of a Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) as being that of a planning tool. "This is somewhat incorrect," government said, adding the MTEF was largely used to regulate and project future expenditure of all the government departments and some of public entities.

The MTSF contains all the key priorities and programmes of government to which the MTEF projects all the future public spending of government departments.

The report also praised the country's transformation, reconstruction and development programme blueprint saying they were fully consistent with the vision of sustainable development. It however called for the adoption of a sustainable development strategy to unlock the creativity of the public.

"An inclusive policy-making framework, with processes that embody the major concerns of the various stakeholders is likely to produce the right conditions under which they can unleash their creative involvement in the development process."

SOURCE: - BuaNews