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"R2bn in unspent funds for social grants has been declared by the SA Social Security Agency due to the re-registration process of social grant beneficiaries," stated the Adjusted Estimates of National Expenditures.
Deputy Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene said the saving, which resulted in the Treasury adjusting its spending forecast downwards, was the result of cleaning up corruption in the grant system.
"The R2bn is as a result of this cleaning of the system after weeding out fraud from the social grant expenditure," Nene told reporters.
Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said the decrease in the department's budget had nothing to do with policy revision.
"We are not cutting any social expenditure. It is part of the savings," he said.
Gordhan said it did not necessarily mean that the state had been paying out R2bn a year to welfare fraudsters.
The government had been fighting large-scale fraud in the social grant system for years.
The department recently ordered welfare beneficiaries to re-register for grants to enable it to move to a biometrics-based payment system.
The process had uncovered massive fraud and about 110 000 illegitimate beneficiaries.
