The Public Finance Management Act, 1999 (PFMA; Act No. 1 of 1999) is the primary public finance management law in South Africa. It delineates standards for expenditure, accounting, and reporting for public entities. Its scope is generally limited to entities of national and

provincial Provincial may refer to: Government & Administration * Provincial capitals, an administrative sub-national capital of a country * Provincial city (disambiguation) * Provincial minister (disambiguation) * Provincial Secretary, a position in Can ...

governments. A piece of framework legislation, its implementation is governed by regulations and directives produced by the

National Treasury A treasury is either *A government department related to finance and taxation, a finance ministry. *A place or location where treasure, such as currency or precious items are kept. These can be state or royal property, church treasure or in ...

. The act was drafted by the first post-apartheid government to modernise public finance management standards and comply with Section 216 of the

Constitution of 1996 A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princip ...

. It replaced and superseded various pieces of

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

-era legislation subsidiary to the Exchequer Act, 1975. In particular, the new public finance management framework was viewed as a necessary complement to the service-delivery focus of the

Reconstruction and Development Programme Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) is a South African socio-economic policy framework implemented by the African National Congress (ANC) government of Nelson Mandela in 1994 after months of discussions, consultations and negotiations ...

, given that previous legislation focused on expenditure control to the detriment of reporting and accounting on the basis of non-financial service-delivery outputs. The act has been viewed as inspired by the New Public Management paradigm.{{Cite web , last=de Vos , first=Dirk , date=2018-09-13 , title=Time to dump the red-tape Acts that govern public finances , url=https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2018-09-14-time-to-dump-the-red-tape-acts-that-govern-public-finances/ , access-date=2023-04-10 , website=Daily Maverick , language=en Since its commencement in April 2000, the PFMA has been amended several times, notably by th
Public Finance Management Amendment Act, No. 29 of 1999

Purpose

The objects of the act are:

* to regulate financial management in the national government; * to ensure that all revenue, expenditure, assets and liabilities of that government are managed efficiently and effectively; * to provide for the responsibilities of persons entrusted with financial management in that government; and * to provide for matters connected therewith.

References

1999 in South African law South African legislation