By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The City of Johannesburg has welcomed the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) decision to lift the suspension of the metro’s listed debt instruments.
This comes after the City tabled its annual report for the 2024/25 financial year, fulfilling a key regulatory requirement and restoring Johannesburg’s full compliance with the JSE debt listing requirements.
MMC for Finance Loyiso Masuku said, the lifting of the suspension signalled that the City was stabilising governance, strengthening financial reporting, accountability and sound public finance management.
She said the decision was a step forward in restoring investor confidence and market credibility.
JSE said, the suspension was lifted with immediate effect after the municipality complied with the bourse’s debt and specialist securities listings requirements.
According to the JSE listings requirements, a listed company has up to three months to publish its preliminary or condensed financial results and up to four months to issue its full audited annual financial statements (AFS) and integrated annual report following its financial year-end.
Meanwhile the City wrote off R33.58 billion in irrecoverable trade and other receivables, as well as unauthorised, irregular, and wasteful expenditures.
This was revealed in the City of Johannesburg’s 2024/25 Integrated Annual Report, which was published on Thursday, 28 May 2026.
The report showed a 44% decline in overall Unauthorised, Irregular, Fruitless and Wasteful (UIFW) expenditure balances.
These balances dropped from R23.7 billion in 2024 to R13.3 billion in 2025, a substantial reduction despite the incurrence of new expenditures.
The Auditor-General (AG) noted that these write-offs do not prove that future non-compliance has been prevented.
“It reflects the closure of legacy matters through proper governance processes,” the Auditor-General said in the report. The forward task is to maintain the strengthened compliance and supply chain control environment that has enabled these investigations to be concluded.”
The aim should be to reduce the inflow of new unauthorised, irregular, and wasteful expenditures into the system in step with the run-off of historical balances.