Government still balks at privatisation
Partial asset sales may satisfy private sector and relieve state burden
By the turn of the century, a young ANC-led government had privatised state-owned assets worth about R11-billion, according to The Economist. Having inherited the problem of highly indebted and underperforming assets from the apartheid regime, the government simply had to sell some of these assets to ease the burden on the fiscus. The last big privatisation, which fed into the acrimonious relations between former president Thabo Mbeki and the party's alliance partners, was that of one-time state-owned telecommunications giant Telkom, in 2003. Fourteen years later, state-owned enterprises are once again the biggest burden on the South African fiscus, negatively affecting the creditworthiness of the state. And creditors are calling more loudly for highly indebted companies such as SAA and Eskom to be placed in private hands. Peter Sullivan, managing director and head of the public sector group for Africa at London-based Citibank, told Business Times privatisation would promote market ...
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