Not a single cent of the R153 million allocated to RDP projects from the National Lottery Fund has been spent, reports the Sunday Independent. The issue of unspent RDP funds has been a subject of discussion between the Minister of Trade and Industry, Alec Erwin, and the Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel, for a long time. No solution seems to be in sight. The closure of the Ministry of Reconstruction and Development (RDP) in 1996 left a vacuum in terms of an institutional mechanism to take forward the RDP programme and - in the current scenario - distribute RDP Lotto funds.