{"id":256669,"date":"2023-04-05T11:23:38","date_gmt":"2023-04-05T09:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/eskom-pfma-partial-exemption-withdrawn-for-now\/"},"modified":"2023-04-05T11:23:38","modified_gmt":"2023-04-05T09:23:38","slug":"eskom-pfma-partial-exemption-withdrawn-for-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/eskom-pfma-partial-exemption-withdrawn-for-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom PFMA partial exemption withdrawn, for now"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana says National Treasury has withdrawn Eskom\u2019s partial exemption from the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) granted to the power utility last week.<\/p>\n

Godongwana announced the withdrawal during a joint meeting of Parliament’s Committee on Appropriations, the Standing Committee on Finance, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, the Standing Committee on the Auditor General and the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises.<\/p>\n

The exemption would have allowed Eskom to report irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure on its annual report and not annual financial statements.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public has taken an interest in this matter precisely because of the history of corruption. We appreciate that South Africans are quite aggressive and vigilant against corruption, which is going to be an important point for our society. We take that as a positive step.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had these [public] comments and everything and yesterday. We had an intensive discussion with the AG [Auditor General]. In that discussion, there were some comments by the AG which have to be part of the framing of the gazette.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn light of those comments and generally the comments by the public, we have decided to withdraw the gazette for now and take all these comments into account, and also have a detailed consultation with the Auditor General and the auditors\u2026 of Eskom so that checks and balances for corruption are tightened,\u201d Godongwana said.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, National Treasury had explained that reporting these irregularities increased the \u201clikelihood of qualified audit opinion\u2026 that triggers loan covenants, which will likely further increase Eskom\u2019s cost of borrowing and may result in additional fiscal pressure from Eskom\u2019s debt burden\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the parliamentary meeting on Wednesday, Godongwana reiterated that position, emphasising that the intention of the exemption was \u201cnot to hide anything\u201d but to allow the power utility to have a better financial statement and protect the fiscus, considering government\u2019s R254 billion debt arrangement with the power utility.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Eskom applied [for the exemption], we had to ask ourselves a question. If Eskom\u2019s financial statements are being constrained by these irregularities, what are the implications for Eskom\u2019s cost of capital? If they cannot raise that capital, what are the implications for the fiscus? We look at it from a fiscal sustainability eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe then said we should grant Eskom the exemption\u2026 from disclosing those in the annual financial statement. But those should be disclosed in the broader annual report. In other words, we are not hiding them. The intention\u2026 is to allow Eskom to have a better financial statement but at the same time, create an environment where there\u2019s transparency on corruption and irregular expenditure and all of those things.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeliberately so, we also wanted to make sure that we even set conditions for Eskom to report quarterly on what actions are they taking in that regard,\u201d Godongwana said. \u2013 SAnews.gov.za<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana says National Treasury has withdrawn Eskom\u2019s partial exemption from the Public Finance Management Act (PFMA) granted to the power utility last week. Godongwana announced the withdrawal during a joint meeting of Parliament’s Committee on Appropriations, the Standing Committee on Finance, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, the Standing Committee on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":256670,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[38678],"class_list":{"0":"post-256669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-south-africa","8":"tag-sanews","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/eskom-pfma-partial-exemption-withdrawn-for-now.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}