{"id":463248,"date":"2021-01-25T14:36:17","date_gmt":"2021-01-25T12:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=463248"},"modified":"2021-01-25T14:36:17","modified_gmt":"2021-01-25T12:36:17","slug":"anc-pushes-for-extension-of-covid-19-grants-in-south-africa-despite-lack-of-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/463248\/anc-pushes-for-extension-of-covid-19-grants-in-south-africa-despite-lack-of-funds\/","title":{"rendered":"ANC pushes for extension of Covid-19 grants in South Africa – despite lack of funds"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ruling ANC says that the government should extend income grants in South Africa as part of its response to the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

In a closing address following a party Lekgotla meeting on Sunday, Cyril Ramaphosa – speaking as presidency of the ANC – said that the party had agreed, in the context of the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, to consider the extension of basic income relief to unemployed people who do not receive any other form of state assistance.<\/p>\n

This would depend on the state of public finances and that there should be a clear ‘exit strategy’, he said.<\/p>\n

The push comes in direct contrast to comments made by Ramaphosa last week – speaking as president of the country – in which he indicated that South Africa simply did not have the finances to extend significant Covid-19 support into 2021.<\/p>\n

The president told 702<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that South Africa does not have the money to provide the same kind of relief packages which the government offered during the first wave of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not have the money, that is the simple truth,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cWe are constrained from a financing point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe relief measures we announced last year amounted to about 10% of our GDP, which is quite big for a little economy like ours.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now we are at a stage where we have to fund the vaccines, which is going to amount to a lot of money as well. We are constrained,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The pandemic prompted president Cyril Ramaphosa to announce a temporary top-up of existing grants by up to R300, including a R350 unemployment grant in late March 2020.<\/p>\n

In its birthday celebrations at the start of Janaury, the ANC also announced that it will consider the introduction of a basic income grant in South Africa in 2021.<\/p>\n

Rampahosa said consideration for the grant comes after emergency financial measures introduced around the Covid-19 pandemic come to an end.<\/p>\n

Despite the country\u2019s limited resources, the country needs to look at identifying other poverty alleviation measures, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis year the ANC government, and broader society, will need to continue discussions on the desirability and the viability of a basic income grant to provide a social safety net to poor people in our country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Ramaphosa has signed new tax and finance rules into law \u2013 here are the changes you should know about<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The governing ANC has announced a number of initiatives a part of the country’s economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":217095,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11121],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-463248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463248"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":463258,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463248\/revisions\/463258"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}