Senior Specialist: Public Finance

M.Com (Public Finance) - University of Cape Town

Donald Maphiri is a senior public finance specialist at the Applied Fiscal Research Centre [AFReC (Pty) Ltd)]. He has extensive experience in the area economic research, training and management consulting in the public sector environment. He has been a Director of Performance Budgeting System (Pty) Ltd since 2003.

Since 1998, he regularly makes inputs to the work of Parliamentary Portfolio Committees at both provincial and national spheres of government on oversight issues. In 1999 he worked on a project aimed at creating jobs for small scale agriculture at the Southern African Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) based at the University of Cape Town. The project was commissioned by the National Department of Agriculture. In that year he also participated on a project to produce a guideline document on alternative institutional frameworks for Local Economic Development (LED) in South Africa for the Department of Constitutional Development.

In 2000 he participated on consulting work for the National Treasury on earmarked taxes for financing Social Security as well as on the budgetary process for the Department of Labour. In 2002 he contributed a chapter to the report on the State of the Public Service commissioned by the Public Service Commission. In that year he also led a project for the Public Service Commission aimed at developing risk management frameworks for the public sector. Between 2002 and 2006 he led projects for the comprehensive rollout of the AFReC Public Finance Management Programme to senior managers in both Mpumalanga and Kwa-Zulu Natal provincial governments. In 2005 he led a project focussing on audits of public financial management frameworks for the Department of Education in Limpopo.

In 2006 he led a project aimed at assessing the financial condition of municipalities in Gauteng Province which culminated on a financial summit in 2007. This project was commissioned by the Department of Provincial and Local Government. In the same year he also led a project on evaluating the annual reports and budgets of Chapter 9 constitutional institutions to determine the extent to which they have contributed to constitutional democracy in South Africa. He also led a team to developing a quarterly performance measurement and reporting framework for Provincial Treasury in the Western Cape.

In 2008 he was involved in a project aimed at identifying alternative sources of revenue for the City of Johannesburg. He is currently leading a project aimed at helping the Western Cape Department of Transport and Public Works with rolling out the Public Transport Improvement Programme in the province.

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