Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana says the best way to deal with poverty in the long-term is through inclusive growth and not by creating state dependency through grants.
This was after the minister announced that the largest increase in spending went towards the extension of the R350 social distress grant to March next year.
Breakdown of social grant spend:
Godongwana says all the social grants combined, account for nearly R200 billion in budget allocations. Godongwana was responding to questions at a post-budget breakfast in Cape Town.
“I’m not anti-poor, I live with the poor, I grew up in Cala, I build a house and live in Cala with the poor. Now, should we not be focusing on including people in the economy? I don’t have easy answers for that question. It’s an important goal to think about. In the meantime I accept that there’ll be those in our society who can’t ….we take income support as a transition towards inclusive growth, not make it a permanent feature of our society.”
Godongwana spoke on a number of other issues including unaffordable increases of public wage bill, Eskom and the cost of load shedding to the economy:
