Government should take over the payment of social grants, African National Congress (ANC) treasurer general Zweli Mkhize has said.

The SA Social Security Agency would however struggle with the technology needed to distribute the grants, he said at the Gordon Institute of Business Science on Wednesday evening.

Other processes involved could be outsourced following a bidding process. Given the sophistication of the task, it would be difficult to find many competitors, he said.

On Wednesday, the Constitutional Court reserved judgment in an application by the Black Sash for the court to exercise “supervisory jurisdiction” over any new contract to distribute social grants, and its implementation.

The court criticised Sassa and Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini for failing to ensure an arrangement was in place to pay grants after March 31, when the invalid and illegal contract with Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) expires.

The court ruled in 2014 that the CPS contract was invalid, but suspended its order to give Sassa and the department time to insource the administrative requirements to distribute grants.

Mkhize admitted that there had been many failures in government’s running of state-owned enterprises.

“We must not condemn ourselves for that. We must face up to the challenges,” he said.

Eskom, for example, needed to be reformed.

The state had to deal with people’s increasing aspirations through improved service delivery and growing the economy.