By David Masango

Tshwane metropolitan municipality has performed its duties above average in the 2004/2005 financial year, municipality manager Blake Mosley-Lefatola told reporters today.

Mosley-Lefatola and the metro's Chief Financial Officer Renier du Toit briefed the media here about the metro's service delivery and budget expenditure during the past financial year.

He said there was a positive collection trend in terms of income and expenditure in the operating budget as well as expenditure in the capital programme.

"This translates to better efficiency in the utilisation of council's resources and means better service delivery for the communities and stakeholders," Mosley-Lefatola said. He explained that the city recorded 90.1 of capital expenditure (CAPEX) - the highest to date.

In the 2002/2003 financial year 69.2 percent was spent of the budgeted amount of R727 million and 81.1 percent was spent in 2003/3004 from a budget of R947 million.

Mosley-Lefatola said the bulk of the money was spent on the northern areas, including Soshanguve, Mabopane, Hammanskraal, which were previously disadvantaged and where there was serious lack of infrastructure.

"In order to promote economic development and attract investors in these areas, we have to invest in infrastructure development there and at the same time investing in other areas that already have good infrastructure so that the infrastructure does not deteriorate," he said.

Du Toit explained that a large sum of money was spent on projects that focused on roads and storm water drainage, water supply and sanitation as well as electricity.

"In order to attract investment in business in these areas, we have to make sure that the areas are accessible and conducive to conducting business, thus we invest in roads and storm water and other infrastructure," said Du Toit.

Meanwhile, Mosley-Lefatola said the city was now targeting to reach a CAPTEX target of 95 percent from the budgeted R1.6 billion in the 2005/2006 financial year.

Source: BuaNews