{"id":838347,"date":"2025-09-26T09:21:14","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T07:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=838347"},"modified":"2025-09-26T09:22:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T07:22:23","slug":"big-social-grant-changes-from-next-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/838347\/big-social-grant-changes-from-next-month\/","title":{"rendered":"Big social grant changes from next month"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has announced that social grants will increase from October, in line with the 2025 budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tabling the budget speech this year, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced a considerable above-inflation social grant increase from 1 April 2025, followed by a slight increase on 1 October 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the budget, which was the third iteration of the framework following wide rejection of a planned VAT hike, National Treasury had to do a fine balancing act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the initial budgets in February and March, Godongwana had planned to increase social grants by more than inflation for three years to counter the effect of a higher VAT rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, when the planned additional revenue from the VAT hike fell away, so too did the plans for above-inflation hikes in the two outer years of the framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nevertheless, the R1.6 billion increase in social grants for 2025\/26 remained unchanged. Social grants were allocated R284.8 billion for 2025\/26.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This figure is set to decrease over the next two years, with R259.7 billion allocated for 2026\/27 and R271.4 billion for 2027\/28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From 1 October 2025, the social grant amounts will be increased by another R10:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Old Age Grants will increase from R2,310 to R2,320<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Old Age Grants (older than 75 years) will increase from R2,330 to R2,340<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>War Veterans Grant will increase from R2,330 to R2,340<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Disability Grant will increase from R2,310 to R2,320<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Care Dependency Grant will increase from R2,310 to R2,320<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>SASSA noted that the old age grant will be paid on 2 October 2025, disability grants on 3 October and children&#8217;s grants on 6 October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">More people on grants than working<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a  data-lightbox=\"post-image\" href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/grants-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/grants-1-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-829995\" srcset=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/grants-1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/grants-1-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/grants-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/grants-1.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2003, the proportion of individuals receiving social grants was 12.8%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This increased to 30.9% in 2019 and surged to 40.1% in 2024 due to the introduction of the special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The R350 SRD grant was initially introduced as a temporary relief measure for struggling households during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> However, it has been extended every year since and has been hiked to R370.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The SRD grant was again extended by a year in the latest budget to end March 2026, with R35.2 billion allocated to maintain the current R370 per month per beneficiary, including administration costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The government is working towards making the grant a permanent support fixture as part of its plans to introduce a basic income grant\u2014though these plans are still very much up in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Statistics South Africa\u2019s 2024 General Household Survey (GHS) revealed that reliance on government funding is growing, with four of every 10 households in South Africa relying on state welfare. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Grants are the second most important source of income after salaries. More than one-fifth (23.8%) of households indicated that grants were their primary source of income.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, this places a significant burden on South Africa&#8217;s much smaller tax base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking at raw numbers SASSA&#8217;s annual report for the 2023\/24 financial year revealed that it pays grants to 28 million South Africans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The latest employment data from Stats SA shows that 16.8 million people are employed in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While South Africa has about 26 million registered taxpayers, only about 7.9 million pay personal income tax. Even fewer, around 1 million people, or 1.5% of the population, pay 60.9% of all personal income tax.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Think tanks have previously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iej.org.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/IEJ-policy-brief-jobs-vs-grants.pdf\"><strong>tried to counter the narrative that social grants are a trade-off<\/strong><\/a> for finding work, arguing that payouts from the state actually enable job seekers to find work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, even the National Treasury has warned of creating a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.news24.com\/business\/economy\/godongwana-warns-against-cycle-of-dependency-for-youth-in-basic-income-debate-report-20210808\"><strong>cycle of dependency<\/strong><\/a> through unconditional grants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There have been proposal to move from planning a &#8216;basic income grant&#8217; to a &#8216;jobseekers grant&#8217;, which is more conditional and limited, aimed at helping people find work, rather than paying money out in perpetuity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) has announced that social grants will increase from October, in line with the 2025 budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":798459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[785,4103],"class_list":["post-838347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-sassa","tag-social-grant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838347","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=838347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":838350,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/838347\/revisions\/838350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=838347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=838347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=838347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}