Treasury's bail out of SAX will not solve underlying problem
23 February 2015
I have today written to the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises, Dipuo Letsatsi-Duba, requesting that she urgently call on South African Express (SAX) and National Treasury to table, before Parliament, the terms and value of the latest bail-out awarded to SAX.
It is inconceivable that we are witnessing further money being ploughed into a badly-run State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) just days before the Minister of Finance is to deliver a budget where he will inevitably ask for more belt-tightening from South African's.
The DA is concerned that this bailout comes at a time when SAX has yet to table financial results for the 2013-2014 year, after it failed to convince auditors that it was a going concern.
It is reported that the bailout came with "stringent conditions" but until these are made public this claim cannot be independently corroborated. Parliament must be allowed to interrogate these conditions to ensure that the South African public are not being short-changed by rewarding yet another inefficient parastatal with a bailout.