Increases in old age, child grants

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Cape Town – The old age and disability grants will increase from R1 270 to R1 350 in April, says Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan.

The foster care grant will be R830, while child support grants increase to R310 a month in April and R320 in October.

On Wednesday, Minister Gordhan delivered his fifth Budget Speech in the current administration, in which he said the number of people eligible for grants will increase to 16.5 million in the next three years. But the good news is that the recent re-registration of grant recipients and the introduction of a new payment system has lowered the cost of administration. Invalid beneficiaries were removed from the system. 

South Africa’s social assistance system is one of the largest in Africa and is government’s most direct means of combatting poverty.  Spending on the social grant system accounts for 3% of the GDP and is projected to rise from R118 billion in 2013/14 to R145 billion by 2016. The child support and old age grants are the two largest grant programmes, constituting about 75% of total grant spending.

Over the past decade, the number of social grant beneficiaries has doubled from 7.9 million in 2003 to 15.8 million this year largely due to an expansion of the child support grant.

In 2012, all social grant beneficiaries were required to re-register with the South African Social Security Agency and the process was intended to eliminate fraud and corruption in the social grant system.

In August, 2013, 340 000 old age and disability grants were cancelled because beneficiaries failed to re-register. – SAnews.gov.za