Treasury is putting its money where its mouth is allocating an extra R7 billion for the provision of vaccine procurement.
In his budget speech earlier on Wednesday, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni announced additional funds for the country’s vaccination campaign.
Treasury’s Budget documents repeatedly stress the importance of a smooth vaccine rollout process, linking it directly to the nation’s prospects for an economic turnaround.
Health Minister Zweli Mkhize has said on a number of occasions that there was no upper limit for spending on vaccine procurement.
But at some stage, the government had to put a number to the programme and that was up to Mboweni.
He told the National Assembly that Treasury had now allocated R12 billion to funding the vaccine rollout over the medium term.
“We are allocating more than R10 billion for the purchase and delivery of vaccines for the next two years. We are increasing the contingency reserve from R5 billion to R12 billion to make provision for any further purchasing of vaccines.”
The bulk of the money, according to the budget review document, will be used to buy vaccines, with R2.4 billion allocated to provinces to help them distribute and administer vaccines.
The Medical Research Council also gets a R100 million injection for vaccine research.
-EWN
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