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By Reuters 
11h ago
JOHANNESBURG – The government has transferred 1.5 billion rand ($ 98 million) to the administrators of the national carrier South African Airways (SAA), but the funds still cannot be used, administrators said on Thursday.
The administrators said that the conditions that the Department of Public Companies (DPE) imposed on how the money should be spent contravene labor and business laws.
“We cannot use the funds until the DPE has modified the conditions,” they added in a statement.
A spokesman for the DPE said the department would comment later.
SAA entered a local form of bankruptcy protection in December of last year after roughly a decade of financial losses, and its fortunes worsened after its flights were suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
It stopped all operations at the end of September when the funds dried up.
The government granted SAA a R10.5 billion bailout in October’s medium-term budget, but funds from that bailout were not expected to flow until mid-January.
SAA is one of the few struggling state-owned companies that has put great pressure on the public finances of Africa’s most industrialized economy for many years.
REUTERS
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