Five out of nine state-owned enterprises (SOEs) recorded profits in the 2009/10 financial year, the SA Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) said on Tuesday.
“Of the nine SOEs reporting to the department of public enterprises (DPE), only five produced a profit in 2009/10,” the SAIRR said in a statement.
This did not take into account SOEs that were not accountable to the department of public enterprises, which is the shareholder representative of government for the nine SOEs.
Transnet was the most profitable parastatal, while Eskom recorded the biggest loss in 2009/10, according to the latest South Africa Survey, to be published by the SAIRR next week.
“The most lucrative parastatal was Transnet, which showed a profit of R3 billion,” the SAIRR said.
The Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, SA Airways, SA Express, and the SA Forestry Company all made a profit in 2009/10.
The combined profit of these five parastatals was R4 billion.
“The least profitable SOE for the 2009/10 financial year was Eskom, which posted a loss of over R9.7bn, although it has since turned around its fortunes and posted a profit of R13bn for 2010/11.”
Alexcor, Broadband Infraco, and Denel posted losses for 2009/10 totalling R310 million.
The total loss of all four entities was R10bn.
“This equated to a net loss of R6bn for all SOEs,” SAIRR said.
The total assets of all SOEs in 2009/10 amounted to over R450bn.
“The biggest concern with these results is that the government will have to support loss-making entities at taxpayers’ expense,” said Jonathan Snyman, a researcher at the SAIRR.
The institute’s analysis was based on the annual reports of the nine SOEs.
Sinudeity
“The most lucrative parastatal was Transnet, which showed a profit of R3 billion"Yes, yes. But how much assets did they sell?
Last time they showed a profit, they sold the Waterfront to Middle-eastern oil-barons.
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RobinH
I'm not even vaguely surprised. The top execs milk the companies dry with absurd "performance bonuses" platinum handshakes and extravagent overuse of expense accounts and just keep getting away with it.Report Abuse
Doculam
Are we surprised? Because of state funding, a false sense of security is created, that whether the company makes it or not, the State (taxpayers) will help again.Report Abuse
Stimela
and yet our lovely youth President Juju is telling us to nationalize more, he should read these statistics...............oh i forgot one needs metric to read and understand statistics.Report Abuse
CheeseBoy
All the more reason NOT to nationalize.one would think with the growing demand for power eskom would have raked in massive profits. but instead they milk US the middle class even more and sell power to mines, BP big power hoggers for next to nothing.
worse still the CEOs rake in millions in bonuses , for what!!!!??
I have never heard of such stupidity.
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SeshegoGuY
I used to work for DPE. The less said about Eskom the better..rotten to the core (and full of overpaid consultants)Transnet- I agree sinuedity, they are very inefficient, year in year out they miss their targets on Coal export- Over the past 4 years coal export have increases by less than 1% (even during the commodity boom) and yet they keep raking in the billions because of selling assets and clever accounting (adopting new method of valuating assets)
Im dissapointed Broadband Infraco made a loss, the new CEO is doing a good job getting rid of corruption there (a clean up audit)
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zaco
ANC's fault........ANC is bad.......it is baaaaaad ..... mediocrity.in the ruling partyReport Abuse
BaleliM
this is not surprising. Govt employees are rarely in the office, care less about customer service and then execs have huge salaries and they spend their time in meetings that yield nothing.Report Abuse
somaartakeit
"SA's state-owned businesses don't make money" but we must nationalise and make more loses.Report Abuse