The maximum old age, disability and care dependency grants will rise by R40 to R780 a month from April 2005, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel announced on Wednesday.
In his national Budget speech he said that foster-care grants will be increased by R30 to R560 and the child-support grant goes up by R10 to R180 a month.
Manuel said of the R74-billion in additional allocations over the medium-term expenditure framework — of three years — 30% “is added to the social grant programmes, bringing aggregate social security spending to R55,4-billion next year and 12,7% of consolidated spending by 2007/08”.
Manuel said R22,3-billion extra has been allocated to social grants over the next three years.
The Budget review said that between December 2001 and the end of last year, the beneficiaries for the disability and care dependent programmes had grown from 711Â 495 to 1Â 385Â 935 with associated annual costs rising from R4,9-billion to R11,9-billion.
“The findings [of a National Treasury study] suggest that possible causes include changes in the application process, increases in numbers suffering from chronic diseases such as Aids, improvements in the opportunities for disabled people to access and apply for the grant, particularly in remote rural areas, equalisation in the number of women who were availing themselves of the benefit and higher incidence of fraud,” said the Budget Review.
Over the past three years, the Eastern Cape had experienced a 76% increase in the number of beneficiaries accessing the disability and care dependency grants, the Budget Review reported.
Conditional grants to the Eastern Cape amount to R10,7-billion, while in the Free State they amount to R4-billion. In Gauteng, they make up nearly R7-billion, while in KwaZulu-Natal they amount to R12,8-billion.
In Limpopo, the figure is R7,3-billion, while in Mpumalanga it is R3,8-billion. In the Northern Cape, it is R1,3-billion and in the North West R4,6-billion, while in the Western Cape the figure is R4,2-billion. — I-Net Bridge