Cape Town - It seems everybody in South Africa might in future qualify for an old age pension.
The budget review tabled in Parliament states that the means test threshold for the old age grant will be raised as an interim step towards phasing out the test.
Spending on social grants will increase from R118bn in 2013/14 to R145bn in 2016/17. Old people and disabled people who can't work will see their grant increase from R1 265 per month up to R1 350 in the coming financial year.
The foster care grant is the only one that will not increase by more than the inflation rate (will increase by 3.8% from R800 to R830). Old people over 75 and war veterans will now receive R1 370 per month, while the child support grant has been raised from R295 tot R315 per month.
The budget review mentions that social assistance is government’s most direct means of combating poverty. Over the next three years it will remain significant at over 3% of GDP.
The administrative cost of paying grants has however over the past five years been substantial reduced from R32 per beneficiary per month to a fixed rate of R16.40 per beneficiary per month.
Over the past five decade the number of social-grant beneficiaries has doubled from 7.9 million in 2003/04 and 15.8 million in 2013/14.
This was largely due to the expansion of the child support grant. About 11 million people received the child support grants in 2013/14, 2.9 million old age grants, 1.1 million disability grants and 519 000 foster care grants.