The Business Day newspaper’s new index that tracks how well cities and towns spend residents’ money has ranked the City of Ekurhuleni top in the country, the city said on Sunday.

Released in June, the index allocated each municipality a score out of 100 points based on five indicators – the 2014/15 audit outcome; whether it had a permanent or acting municipal manager and chief financial officer; how strictly it managed its debtors; whether it under- or overspent its 2015/16 operational budget; and whether it spent its conditional infrastructure grants that fiscal year. The indicators were selected on the basis of expert interviews and the availability of data, Ekurhuleni spokesperson Themba Gadebe said.

Ekurhuleni topped the rankings among the eight metros with 81.9 points, followed by the eThekwini metropolitan municipality with 81.1 points, the City of Cape Town with 77.19, the City of Johannesburg with 74.72, the City of Tshwane with 68.6, Mangaung with 53.57, Buffalo City with 51.96, and Nelson Mandela Bay bringing up the rear with 49.8 points.

“This is evidence of our commitment towards fiscal prudence and honouring our mandate,” Ekurhuleni mayor Mzwandile Masina said in the statement.

“The imperative of strong oversight is a constitutional obligation that perpetuates the separation of powers model. As a municipality that advocates for this, it is of paramount importance that the culture of strong political oversight is enforced in all various political parties. This reasserts our commitment to the social contract we have with the people of Ekurhuleni,” Masina said.

Business Day noted that the variation between municipalities largely boiled down to how well they were governed and whether or not the right people had been appointed to run the affairs of the municipalities, Gadebe said.