No immediate plans to bail out Transnet: Godongwana

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Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has reiterated that there are no plans of a bail out for cash-strapped Transnet, for now.

The rail freight company has requested more than a hundred billion rand from Treasury.

In delivering his 2023 Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS), Godongwana made it clear that he would not even begin discussing a Transnet bail out unless it accepts government’s new conditions to transform the country’s logistics sector among other things.

“Is there is any details on Transnet bail out? The answer is no. We are still engaging Transnet on what their requirements about a week or so when Transnet approached us with a request for roughly, if I round up, it’s about R50 billion over the next two years. Obviously, we do not want to repeat the template which has happened with others and an example for instance we have helped Eskom for years in funding them about R208 billion to date.”

Godongwana adds that state capture and corruption are some of the reasons for Transnet and Eskom’s financial challenges. Godongwana was briefing MPs in Parliament’s Finances and Appropriations Committees.

“In any event if you look at both at Eskom and Transnet by the way a complicating factor has been state capture which is corruption. So, we are dealing. We are making those interventions. Mr Manyi has made an assumption which is incorrect that [President] Cyril Ramaphosa goes around raising, there is a team that is dealing with loans. It’s only sitting in the Treasury because it is an asset and liability team and that team borrows approximately R2 billion a day. I myself I don’t even have the energy to follow what they are doing let alone Ramaphosa.”