Kaya 959 Reporter
The South African government has completed the sale of South African Airways.
Following the completion of a sale agreement, the South African government announced last Thursday that the Takatso consortium will now take up 51 per cent of South African Airways’ shares, marking eight months since the group was formed.
They were the preferred shareholding firm, Global Airways, the proprietors of low-cost airline LIFT, and Harith General Partners, an infrastructure investment group.
Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan confirmed this during an address to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (SCOPA) on Tuesday.
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Kaya BIz with Gugulethu Mfuphi spoke to Guy Leitche, who is an aviation expert.
Leitche spoke about how this process is still ongoing and that he estimates the complete deal will be finalised in the next two years.
“It has taken them a year to get here, yes, they did the due diligence, I suppose it is welcome that they have gotten to a stage of signing the deal. They have got to change the who act of parliament to get the deal to be done, at this stage there’s still an act that sees SAA as a state-owned entity, that act has to be changed to be allowed for it to be privately owned.”
The there’s a whole manner of all the regulatory frameworks that go into this deal. They have to get new airline services licences for both domestic and international routes.
They have to got to get aircraft certificates from the Civil Aviation Authority for the new entity and they also have to get competition authority approval on this deal. Normally this sort of things would probably take a year or two. says Leitche.
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