Whether you are planning on traveling or renewing your passport, you only have three weeks to do so as the minister of Home Affairs confirmed the increase of passports.The application fee for a standard South African passport for both adults and children will increase from next month. Most applicants will be playing 50% more than the would for a passport application made before the end of of October.
The adjustments to passport fees were signed off by Home Affairs Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi and published in the government gazette on Thursday.
“These Regulations shall be called the Seventeenth Amendment of the Regulations made under the South African Passports and Travel Documents Act 1994, and will come into operation on 1 November 2022,” the gazette reads.
The passport standard fees is set to increase will see a 32-page passport costing R600, which is a R200 increase from the current amount of R400. If you are applying outside South Africa, it will cost you R1 200 for a standard passport – including for children – and R2 400 for a maxi passport.
Passport or travel document replacements will cost double the amount under the new fee structure, unless the original had been “lost, stolen or damaged through no negligence on the part of the holder.”
The South African passport ranks third on the African continent, after Mauritius and Seychelles, while it sits at number 55 globally.
According to the Henley Passport Index, which is the foremost authority on the authoritative ranking of all the world’s passports, South Africans can visit 105 countries out of 227 travel destinations without a visa.
