Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements

The Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) criticizes proposed replacements for the R350 Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress (SRD) grant by the South African National Treasury and the Presidency. The IEJ argues that Treasury's proposals are regressive and exclusionary, potentially reducing the number of beneficiaries by half through the introduction of complex categories and job-seeking conditionalities.

• The National Treasury's proposals seek to replace the SRD grant with a complex system that categorizes poor people into three groups: "extreme poor/multiple constraints", "poor/some constraints", and "less poor/fewer constraints". This system would remove income support entirely for the third category and potentially replace the grant with a household or jobseekers grant for the others.
• The IEJ argues that attaching income support to job-seeking conditionalities—a move influenced by a 2021 World Bank proposal—is problematic because it ignores structural unemployment and adds bureaucratic layers. The document notes that conditionalities introduced in April 2022 already led to the exclusion of up to 5 million previous SRD grant beneficiaries.
• The proposed household grant is criticized for targeting household heads rather than individuals, which the IEJ claims would reduce the number of beneficiaries, limit women's autonomy, and increase the risk of corruption due to the lack of a fixed definition of a household in South Africa.
• The IEJ estimates that a combination of a limited caregivers' grant (restricted to those with children under 2 or in late pregnancy) and a jobseekers' grant could restrict beneficiaries to approximately 5.5 million people, roughly half of the March 2022 SRD grant beneficiary count.
• The IEJ contends that Treasury's claim that the SRD grant is 'unaffordable' ignores the potential for progressive financing and the economic multiplier effect of the grant. It further notes that the government has prioritized using tax overruns of over R200 billion to reduce debt instead of extending income support.

APA

Institute for Economic Justice (2022). Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements. https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/statement-treasury-and-presidency-proposed-srd-grant-replacements/

Chicago

Institute for Economic Justice. Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements. 2022. https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/statement-treasury-and-presidency-proposed-srd-grant-replacements/.

Wikipedia

{{cite press release |author=Institute for Economic Justice |title=Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements |date=7 September 2022 |url=https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/statement-treasury-and-presidency-proposed-srd-grant-replacements/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@misc{instituteforeconomicjustice2022statement, author = {{Institute for Economic Justice}}, title = {{Statement on Treasury and Presidency Proposed SRD Grant Replacements}}, publisher = {Institute for Economic Justice}, year = {2022}, month = sep, url = {https://iej.org.za/press-room/statements/statement-treasury-and-presidency-proposed-srd-grant-replacements/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }