Read more news in our Mini Budget feature.

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan announced on Tuesday that an additional R24.5-billion will be added to those spending plans for this financial year, which were passed in the February Budget introduced by former minister Trevor Manuel.

The biggest chunk of the additional funds will be R16.4-billion, which is added to take care of spending that was unforeseen in February, and which turns out to be unavoidable.

In fact the total amount put forward in the adjusted estimates of additional expenditure tabled by Gordhan in the National Assembly is reduced from R24.5-billion to R14-billion because of R4.56-billion of underspending and declared savings at national level, and R6-billion, which was set aside as a contingency fund in the main budget.

Accordingly the estimate of spending rises now from the budgeted R738.6-billion to the adjusted R752.5-billion.

Included in the adjustments is a billion rand which was set aside for the recapitalisation of the Land Bank in the main budget, but which has not yet been allocated.

Virtually every governmental department includes a boost for its budget under the heading "Higher salary increases than the main budget provided for".

The police get the largest piece of this cash, over a billion rands, with health workers coming next with R9-million.

And there is an additional R200-million allocated for Denel to cover an indemnity claim for the eight A400M military Airbus contracts, on which Cabinet last week took an undisclosed decision on their cancellation. An announcement is expected soon.

The new government costs the taxpayer a significant sum, with more than half a billion rand being allocated to the Public Works department for housing new ministers and deputy ministers.