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Local Government Capital Expenditure (LGCE) Dataset September 2025

Metro capital expenditure is projected to rise by 7.3% y/y to R39bn in 2025/26, despite persistent underspending in the prior year, when more than R8bn of budgets went unspent across the eight metros. While most metros have tabled materially higher capital budgets—led by Cape Town, Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Nelson Mandela Bay—early spending remains slow, with Q1 expenditure at just 10% of annual allocations, reflecting the usual back-loaded spending pattern. Housing is the clear priority, with allocations up 14% and a strong 36% increase in actual spending in Q1, while water infrastructure budgets and spending also improved. In contrast, health capital budgets were cut sharply, and growth in road and energy allocations remained modest.

Financing remains a key risk: only 49% of the R39bn capital envelope is funded through government transfers, with metros increasingly reliant on borrowing (R10.5bn) and internally generated funds (R9bn). Cape Town stands out for its limited dependence on transfers, funding 70% of its capital programme through borrowing and own revenues, while metros such as Tshwane, Mangaung, Ekurhuleni and Buffalo City remain heavily dependent on national allocations, heightening their exposure to fiscal and policy constraints.

Introduction

The LGCE Dataset includes capital and other related expenditure across all 257 Local Governments for the full 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26 financial periods, updated on a quarterly basis.

• Capital and other related expenditure details across all 275 Municipalities
• Local government capital expenditure aggregated by province for "infrastructure related items" such as housing, health, roads, energy and water,  is also included for periods 2017/18 - 2024/25, updated quarterly, allowing for a 7 year trend line to monitor actual performance against budgetary allocations.
• An easy to use interactive Dashboard is also included to extract information on a selected municipality including tables and charts. 
• The main objective of the Local Government Capital Expenditure Dataset, is to track local government performance, benchmark performance against other local governments and identify growth opportunities.  The performance of a metro, DC or local government directly impacts investment opportunities and the attractiveness for investors and monitoring performance in terms of capital expenditure is therefore critical to identify longer term growth opportunities.

The following quarterly indicators are currently included for all municipalities:

• Operating Revenue
• Operating Expenditure
• Capital Expenditure Functional
• Capital Expenditure as % of total expenditure
• Capital Expenditure on key focus areas
  • Housing
  • Health
  • Energy Sources
  • Road Transport
  • Water Management
  • Waste Management
  • Waste Water Management
• Employee Related Costs
• Employee Related Costs % of Operating Revenue
• Employee Related Costs % of Operating Expenditure
• Source of Finance for Capital Revenue
  • Internally generated funds (Rands)
  • Internally generated funds as % of total capital revenue
  • Borrowing
• Surplus/Deficit (Rands)
• Surplus/Deficit % of Total Operating Revenue
• Debtors Age Analysis (Total and exceeding 90 days)
• Creditors Age Analysis (Total and exceeding 90 days)

Information is sourced through various documents released by National Treasury.  Local governments are divided by Metro’s, District Councils and Local Government for all nine provinces including Gauteng, Western Cape, Eastern Cape, Kwazulu Natal, Northern Cape, Limpopo, Mpumalanga, Free State and North West Province.

Full quarterly actual and projected revenue and expenditure details are provided by province for metro's, district councils and local governments. 

 

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