South African Airways (SAA) is in discussions with the Treasury on a cash injection of about R5bn‚ which the company needs to cover historic debt and its working-capital requirements until September.

This emerged from submissions by SAA CEO Vuyani Jarana at a meeting of Parliament’s standing committee on public accounts on Tuesday.

The hoped-for bailout would be in addition to the R10bn injected into SAA by the government in 2017.

Jarana said part of the R5bn was needed now as SAA did not have a credit line and was short of revenue to cover expenses.

"We do need access to capital to sustain the operations. We have been having discussions with Treasury as well as the banks around how we can have an open credit line while we are working with the joint oversight committee [comprising government and SAA board members] on a fully fledged capital structure for SAA."

In a presentation to be made on Wednesday to the standing committee on appropriations‚ SAA says its current cash-flow position is "unsustainable" and will become significantly worse without immediate intervention.

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