South African Airways needs $1.5b in state funding

South African Airways’ administrators proposed the government put up at least 26.7b rand ($1.5b) to rescue the carrier after years of losses and the grounding of commercial passenger flights to contain the spread of coronavirus. The state-owned airline was placed in a local form of bankruptcy protection in December, and the rescue team led by Siviwe Dongwana and Les Matuson have asked for repeated extensions to the publication of a rescue plan. The document was posted on their website on Tuesday, and will now be reviewed by the government before a vote by creditors. The state will need to support the airline “during the post ramp-up period until it is profitable and self-sustaining,” according to the rescue plan. SAA has been loss-making for almost a decade and has required repeated government bailouts and debt guarantees to remain in operation. The funding proposal is about 10b rand more than the government was prepared to allocate to SAA in its annual budget in February, when it set aside 16.4 billion rand. Finance Minister Tito Mboweni is scheduled to deliver a revised annual budget on June 24 that will need to provide more resources to the nation’s coronavirus relief efforts. “We will assess the plan which, we are concerned, might have not been adequately accomplished,” the Department of Public Enterprises said.<br/>