S. African state airline's losses set to widen, CFO says

Losses at South African Airways are set to widen to 4b rand ($292.86m) in 2017/18 from a previous estimate of 2.8b, the state airline’s CFO said, piling further pressure on government finances. Last week, SAA said even with a government injection of 10 billion rand, the struggling airline will remain under-capitalised with a negative equity position of over 9b rand. CFO Phumeza Nhantsi told parliament’s finance committee on Wednesday that the higher projected losses for 2017/18 were related to the retirement of five leased narrow-body aircraft, which meant flights had been cancelled and planes grounded. Vuyani Jarana, SAA’s CEO, said the airline had outstanding debt of 13.8b rand ($1.01b) as of this month and that it needed to pay back domestic lenders and US bank Citi 4b rand by March 2018. “The biggest challenge at SAA is the capital structure as well as the commercial strategy. If we are able to fix that we will be able to get SAA back on its feet,” Jarana said.<br/>