Finance Minister Tito Mboweni is making good on his promise that cash-strapped state-owned entities receiving bailouts from the government would be placed under curatorship.
On Tuesday he announced that chief restructuring officers would be appointed within 48 hours to Eskom, Denel, SABC and SAA.
Mboweni tabled a special appropriation bill in the National Assembly, making available R59 billion to Eskom over the next two years but said that this would go hand in hand with a chief restructuring officer being appointed later in the day.
Chief restructuring officers would also be announced for state arms manufacturers Denel, the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) and South AfricanAirways (SAA) on Wednesday.
Mboweni said the SABC requested R3.2 billion, but this would not be released in one go but in chunks "when certain conditions are met to make sure there's progress in improving the organisation".
During the Treasury budget vote on July 11, Mboweni announced that he would allocate funding from the R13 billion contingency reserve to shore up SAA, SABC and Denel.
The Finance Minister also sounded the alarm, announcing that tax revenue collection was expected to fall far short of what was budgeted for in February.
"This could substantially increase the government's borrowing requirement for2019/2020 which will require the government to revise its funding strategy and current weekly bond issuance at levels beyond what we had planned," he said.
-African News Agency (ANA)
