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Profile of the Director-General
 Lesetja Kganyago has been Director-General of the National Treasury since January 2004.
His primary responsibilities include managing the department; producing a sound and sustainable national budget; managing government’s financial assets and liabilities; overseeing government accounting policies and standards; regulating public sector procurement through policy formulation; developing appropriate fiscal policy and financial management; and improving financial management throughout government
And when his schedule allows him to engage in his favourite pastime – hiking – he heads for the Drakensberg or Limpopo. He also loves to play golf.
Lesetja Kganyago was born in Alexandra township in 1965 within sight of what is today the JSE Securities Exchange. “The reason I was born in Alexandra,” he says, “was to ensure that I got urban resident status. After five years I moved with my mother to Polokwane, and that was where I matriculated.”
The apartheid government’s notorious influx controls limited the number of black South Africans who could move to the cities. Mr Kgangyago’s father continued to work in Johannesburg as a “migrant worker” and, as a result, they saw each other infrequently.
He began his career in accounting at First National Bank, subsequently working for the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the African National Congress (ANC). He first joined the National Treasury in 1996 as Director of International Commercial Financing.
He studied accounting and economics, receiving a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of South Africa (1991) and a Masters in Economics from London University (1994). He has also trained in the areas of:
- Fixed income analysis (World Bank Economic Development Institute, Washington DC)
- External reserve management (JP Morgan, New York)
- US money and capital markets (Goldman Sachs – ANC Senior Economists' Training Programme)
- Financial programming (IMF Institute and the Central Bank of Swaziland)
- Macroeconomic Management (the World Bank and the Economic Development Institute of the University of the Western Cape)
- Banking and finance in South Africa (The Commonwealth and London University)
- The Senior Executive Programme (the Harvard and Wits business schools).
He has been the recipient of various awards, including:
- The Barclays Bank/South African Institute of Race Relations Scholarship (1987)
- The British Council - Helen Suzman Leadership Award (1993)
- The International Financing Review - Yankee Bond Deal of the Year (1997)
- The International Financing Review - Eurobond Deal of the Year (1999).
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