The R350 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant may be discontinued by March next year, as the government currently has no plans to extend it.
This was revealed during the presentation of the 2024 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) by Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana in Parliament on Wednesday.
Instead of extending the SRD grant, the government is exploring ways to reform the social grant system and streamline public employment programs to better support the unemployed.
The MTBPS indicated that there would be no SRD grant allocations in the next few fiscal years.
According to the document, 30.6% of the population will continue to receive some form of grant over the next three years, excluding the Covid-19 SRD grant.
Additionally, the government plans to allocate R3.4 billion for job creation efforts in 2024-25.
Originally introduced as a temporary six-month measure during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the R350 SRD grant has since been extended multiple times.
In this year’s budget, it was increased by R20, raising it to R370. However, the National Treasury emphasised that any permanent increase in grants must be matched by a sustainable source of revenue.
The National Treasury noted that while various forms of financial support exist for unemployed individuals, these are dispersed across different agencies and lack integration.
Moreover, there is limited alignment between social security and the policy goal of boosting employment.
The government is now exploring ways to improve the grant system and strengthen employment initiatives.
This includes a review of the skills development funding system, which collected an average of R20.09 billion in levies over the past three years, with proposals expected in the 2025 budget.
In the 2024 adjusted budget, an additional R1.6 billion was allocated to increase the SRD grant value from R350 to R370 per month, raising the total allocation for the grant to R36.3 billion for 2024-25, including rolled-over funds.
An amount of R1.555 billion has also been rolled over to cover outstanding SRD grant payments from 2023-24.
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