WELFARE GRANT ALLOCATIONS
Welfare grants cut but still protected from inflation
It estimated the number of social grant beneficiaries for the current fiscal year to be 16.97-million people and forecast that this will rise to 18.06-million by 2019-20
Science and Health Treasury has managed to trim R2.1bn from its welfare grant allocations over the next two years while still protecting these transfers from inflation, as it expects the total number of beneficiaries to be lower than earlier forecasts, it said yesterday. It estimated the number of social grant beneficiaries for the current fiscal year to be 16.97-million people and forecast that this will rise to 18.06-million by 2019-20. Spending on social grants, which takes the lion’s share of the social protection budget, is set to increase by 8.2% over the medium term, rising from R138.7bn in the fiscal year 2016-2017 to R151.6bn in 2017-18 to R163.2bn in 2018-19 and R175.6bn in 2019-20. This means that social grant expenditure as a percentage of GDP is set to rise slightly in the fiscal year 2017-2018 to 3.2% of GDP, up from 3.1% of GDP in 2016-2017. The majority of grant beneficiaries are children, who are expected to account for 12.82-million of the grants by 2019-20. The ol...
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