By Liesel Peyper.
The Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant is being extended until March 2026 with provisional allocations set aside for the two outer years, National Treasury noted in its 2025 Budget Review.
“An amount of R35.2 billion is allocated to extend the payment at the current R370 per month per beneficiary, including administration costs.”
However, all of South Africa’s social protection and employment support programmes are being reviewed, which may result in different policy decisions, a Treasury official noted during a question-and-answer session on Wednesday morning ahead of the budget speech.
“The appropriation for the grant is until March 2026 while the [review] process is ongoing,” the official said, adding that South Africa has one of the largest social grant systems of any developing country in the world.
Two additional amounts have been provisionally allocated for the two outer years, while work to investigate the most sustainable and responsible revenue mechanism to fund the mooted permanent universal Basic Income Grant (Big) continues.
Provisional allocations refer to funds that have been set aside for a specific purpose, but which are not being made available in the current fiscal year.
In the 2025 Budget Review, the Treasury has provisionally allocated R36.8 billion in 2026/27 and R38.4 billion in 2027/28 for the SRD grant.
The SRD grant was initiated in 2020 and intended to provide interim relief for distressed individuals during Covid-19. It has since become a semi-permanent spending item in consecutive budgets, with many economists warning that government would not be able to take it away without replacing it with a permanent income grant.
In his Budget Speech on Wednesday afternoon, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana confirmed that the SRD grant will be used “as a basis for the introduction of a sustainable form of income support for unemployed people”.
“The future form and nature of the SRD will be informed by the outcome of the review of active labour market programmes.”
Treasury appealing judgment
In a recent court ruling, National Treasury was ordered to reconsider its criteria for individuals to qualify for the SRD grant.
The ruling, made in January this year, called the current requirements too onerous. Less stringent criteria, however, would mean a significant increase in beneficiaries from the approximately eight million South Africans who receive the grant, with potentially serious repercussions for the fiscus in future years.
Godongwana said on a previous occasion that the government would appeal the court ruling, stating that more qualifying beneficiaries would lead to an unacceptably high expense for the fiscus.