SAA was placed under business rescue in December 2019 due to poor financial performance.

According to the Department of Public Enterprises, SAA was removed from the process in April of 2021 after having substantially implemented the business rescue plan and passed both the liquidity and solvency tests.

But the sale of SAA majority stake to Takatso is still to be concluded.

Public Enterprise Minister Pravin Gordhan says SAA has weathered many storms.

The national carrier managed to avoid total collapse due to poor financial management and corruption. However, SAA managed to avoid being liquidated and instead was put under business rescue.

All these was done in the midst of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.

“We moved away from liquidation and went for business rescue, with all its troubles and that was at the height of the COVID pandemic, you couldn’t meet physically. Lots of arguments and fights with lawyers took place on Zoom.

We ultimately prevailed as far as that was concerned, we prevented the sale of the assets and today those assets are going to be an important part of the creative transactions that we want to enter into. SAA like all the other state-owned enterprises relied on bailouts,” says Gordhan.

--SABC--