Yesterday, National Treasury released South African Airways’ (SAA) financial presentation which revealed that the national carrier’s net losses sat at R1.84 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017.
For the year (2017), the airline’s net loss was recorded at R5.6 billion, R2.9 billion worse than the budgeted net loss of R2.8 billion.
Democratic Alliance shadow deputy of finance, Alf Lees, told FTW Online that the presentation was released to the public following a discussion with SAA and Public Enterprises deputy minister, Gratitude Magwanishe, as the scheduled parliamentary meeting where SAA was meant to present this report had been postponed on Wednesday.
“This has been a bizarre situation as SAA has been presenting their quarterly reports in Parliament for some time now, however recently SAA wanted to hold the meeting where they would present their fourth quarter report in private,” he said. “In my nine years in Parliament I have not been exposed to any closed meetings and so we objected to this which resulted in the meeting being postponed”
Lees noted that the request for the meeting to be held in a closed meeting was especially strange as the fourth quarter report was largely the same as SAA’s 2017 third quarter report which they had presented in a public meeting in Parliament.
Treasury stated that the request for the meeting to be held in committee had emanated from the need to protect the confidentiality of some of SAA’s strategies.
“We have agreed that should there be any commercially sensitive information in any of SAA’s presentations to Parliament, we may be prepared to hold a closed session,” added Lees. “However, the reasoning and circumstances would have to be very exceptional for us to do so.”
