Social grants will in the next financial year increase by between 4 and 4.7%, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has announced.
This is an indication that social grants continue to increase in line with inflation.
The Budget delivered by the Minister, in Parliament on Wednesday, anticipates that the number of social grant beneficiaries will increase by almost one million over the medium term to almost 19 million by 2022/23.
The seven social grant categories will increase by between 4 and 4.7%. In this regard, old age and disability grants will increase by 4.5% to R1 860, up from R1 780.
Persons over the age of 75 and war veterans will now receive R1 880, up from R1 800.
Foster care will increase from R1 000 to R1 080, care dependency rises from R1 780 to R1 860. Child support will now be R445, up from R425.
Additional funds are reprioritised from the social worker scholarship programme grant, which will end in 2020/21, to provinces to employ 200 social worker graduates.
“Funds amounting to R406.2 million in 2020/21, R517.3 million in 2021/22 and R626 million in 2022/23 are reprioritised, mainly to the Early Childhood Development Conditional Grant,” the Budget Review document states.
As a result, the subsidy rate per child will increase by 23.8% from R15 in 2019/20 to R18.57 in 2022/23.
“By 2022/23, government estimates it will provide access to Early Childhood Development services to almost 700 000 children under the age of four,” the Review reads. Over the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) period, said National Treasury, funds amounting to R714 million are reprioritised from the Department of Social Development to its provincial counterparts for programmes to prevent HIV infections, substance abuse, and gender-based violence and femicide.
