The Democratic Alliance (DA) has accused National Treasury of attempting to hide the true costs of South African Airways’ (SAA) latest bailout.
This after Treasury refused to provide the DA Standing Committee on Finance with details of interest rates charged on renewed loans for the national carrier claiming the information was “confidential”.
“This response was clearly nonsensical as the Standing Committee on Finance was previously provided with a full list of all lenders to SAA together with the amounts, maturity dates and interest rates,” said DA shadow deputy minister of finance, Alf Lees.
Domestic lenders to SAA were due to be paid R5 billion on September 30, 2019, however they were convinced to roll over the loans provided certain conditions were met. Lees noted that it was suspected that one of the conditions were that interest rates charged on the renewed loans would be increased.
Treasury sent another response to the DA yesterday which stated that the exact figures of the interest rates needed to be requested from SAA.
However Lees said that this was an unacceptable response as they believed Treasury was obligated to provide the information required by the committee.
