Options for the restructuring of state ownership of South African Airways

Journal of Transport and Supply Chain Management

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Options for the restructuring of state ownership of South African Airways
 
Creator Vermooten, Joachim
 
Subject transport economics; industrial organisation privatisation; privatisation trends; partial privatisation state-owned airlines; state ownership; state-owned enterprise (SOE); state-owned company (SOC); South African Airways (SAA); airline privatisation; air transport deregulation; share issue privatis
Description Background: South Africa adopted an economic policy that included both deregulation and privatisation in line with the 1980s’ global trends. Economic deregulation of the domestic air transport market was implemented in 1991 and partial privatisation of South African Airways (SAA) 8 years later, in 1999. This was reversed in 2002. SAA’s poor financial performance since 2012, its insolvency and future funding needs resulted in mixed messages on the future ownership of SAA. Since 2004 the policy of full ownership of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) ruled out SAA’s privatisation. SAA’s escalating losses prompted the Minister of Finance and National Treasury to favour the introduction of a strategic equity partner (SEP) to invest in a minority shareholding in SAA.Objectives: This article examined options for the restructuring of state ownership of state-owned airlines in South Africa.Method: Contemporary privatisation trends and the level of state ownership of airlines in Europe and elsewhere were identified. The preferred methods of airline privatisation and their economic benefits were determined.Results: Contrary to the freeze of privatisation in South Africa, increased trends in privatisation were identified elsewhere. In particular, share issue privatisations (SIPs) on listed securities exchanges were favoured to SEPs. South African Airways’ financial circumstances demonstrate the need to eliminate SAA’s losses and to resolve its insolvency.Conclusion: The South African official definition of privatisation needs to be broadened to include SIP instead of being limited to the sale of shares in SAA. The SIP method of privatisation is ideally suited to resolve SAA’s capitalisation and subject SAA to market and regulatory disciplines.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Prof Jackie Walters
Date 2018-11-15
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Literary Analysis
Format text/html application/epub+zip application/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/jtscm.v12i0.412
 
Source Journal of Transport and Supply Chain Management; Vol 12 (2018); 15 pages 1995-5235 2310-8789
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://jtscm.co.za/index.php/jtscm/article/view/412/749 https://jtscm.co.za/index.php/jtscm/article/view/412/748 https://jtscm.co.za/index.php/jtscm/article/view/412/750 https://jtscm.co.za/index.php/jtscm/article/view/412/739
 
Coverage South Africa; Sub-Sahara Africa; SADC 1998-2018 privatised entities; state-owned airlines
Rights Copyright (c) 2018 Joachim Vermooten https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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