South African Airways may exit administration this month

South African Airways may exit administration later this month and a decision on an equity partner for it could be made by the end of March, the ministry responsible for the state-owned airline said Wednesday. SAA has been under a local form of bankruptcy protection since December 2019, and its longstanding financial woes worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. It suspended all operations around the end of September. The Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) said at a virtual meeting of a parliamentary committee that the remainder of a 10.5b rand ($702.4m) bailout could flow to the airline now an appropriation act had been passed. So far 2.8b rand of the bailout has been transferred to SAA, the department’s presentation showed. “We are expecting that during the course of this month the business rescue practitioners should be exiting the business,” DPE Director-General Kgathatso Tlhakudi said.<br/>