Gauteng municipalities have continued to regress and irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure are still some areas of concern as they have increased to R204-million.

This is according to the Auditor General of South Africa (AGSA) report on the sustainment of audit outcomes affecting the provincial local government in its 11 municipalities.

"We remain concerned about the state of non-compliance in areas of procurement, supply chain, contract management as well as the inadequate consequence management that sometimes exist in the province," said AGSA Gauteng business executive Dumisani Cebekhulu.

In the 2015-2016 financial year, fruitless and wasteful expenditure increased significantly from R34-million to R170-million more than the current period.

Cebekhulu said the non-compliance in municipalities is as a result of irregular expenditures in the province which increased significantly due to not complying with the key legislations.

"The irregular expenditure that we had, which was sitting under review, was R3.6-billion. If you compare that to the previous year, it would have been R1.2-billion," Cebekhulu lamented.

He said that the irregular expenditure, which equates to the R2.4-billion, was related to multi-year contracts awarded in the previous financial year and were  still under investigation.

In the previous financial year, irregular expenditure by municipalities across the country increased by over 50% to R16-billion. This year, however, it increased by 75% to R28.37-billion.

Although Gauteng sustained its 100% unqualified financial opinion, recommendations that the AGSA made didn't always receive the necessary attention at some municipalities.