Cape Town - The National Treasury could tap into the R5 billion in the contingency reserves to deal with the outbreak of Covid-19.
It said departments were also
allocated funds for emergencies in their budgets.
“The contingency reserve is aimed at dealing with among others, unforeseen and unavoidable expenditure and the response to the current disaster meets the criteria,” said the Treasury.
“Funds for emergencies are also provided for in departmental baselines. This includes immediate disaster relief grants and emergency housing grants.
“Other programmes funded in baselines also meet the requirements to respond to the crisis by creating healthy and safe environments.”
“In addition, section 56 of the National Disaster Management
Act allows departments to reprioritise existing budgets to respond to
this.”
The Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs has been allocated almost R500 million for disaster management.
The Department of Small Business Development announced this week it would launch a debt relief fund to help companies in distress.
Businesses would need to show they had been affected by the virus. It would be able to pay for its
operations and pay wages for
workers.
These measures were taken by the government to deal with the impact of the disease on businesses.
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni had said earlier that they had not decided how much would be needed to help deal with the disaster.
The National Treasury planning to do an assessment.