The National Treasury has proposed several changes to the structure of provincial conditional grants over the next three years, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has revealed in his first Medium Term Budget Policy Statement.

In the document released on Thursday, the National Treasury said, from 2022/23, the  HIV, TB, malaria and community outreach grant, which has over the years seen a number of components introduced, would consist of only a comprehensive HIV/AIDS component.

It would fund HIV/AIDS – and tuberculosis-related services; and a district health component, financing community outreach services and services related to COVID-19, human papillomavirus and malaria.

The grant will be renamed the District Health Programme grant.

“The mental health and oncology components introduced in this grant in the 2021 MTEF will be shifted to the direct national health insurance grant.”

In the same vein, the colleges of agriculture had been shifted to the national government, as would the funding provided through the comprehensive agricultural support programme grant.

Alongside responsibility for early childhood development, the early childhood development grant would from April 2022 move from the Department of Social Development to the Department of Basic Education.

The provincial roads maintenance grant included an incentive component allocated based on provincial performance.

The Treasury in the 2021 Budget said this component would be allocated using the main formula of the conditional grant.

“Due to delays in developing objective allocation criteria, the incentive component will be removed from the grant baseline for 2022/23,” it said.

The National Treasury said it would continue to work with the Department of Transport to develop objective criteria for the incentive component.

Source: South African Government News Agency