The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) asked the National Treasury for R1.5 billion in additional funding, but it was rejected despite the entity\u2019s deteriorating finances.<\/p>\n
This was revealed by the Deputy Minister of Communications, Philly Mapulane, who led the SABC\u2019s appearance before Parliament\u2019s Portfolio Committee on Communications.<\/p>\n
Mapulane said the SABC expected R1.5 billion in funding from the National Treasury in the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS).<\/p>\n
However, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana did not announce additional allocations to the ailing state broadcaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe argument was that because of the macro environment the SABC has painted, operating under the environment of analogue switch off and the need for the SABC to ensure the elections are covered, we submitted a motivation to the Treasury for R1.5 billion,\u201d said Mapulane.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the minister was tabling the MTBPS, that allocation was not accepted, so we didn\u2019t get what we requested.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mapulane said the department hopes that in the next Budget Speech in February 2024, the National Treasury will respond positively to the SABC\u2019s request for more funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou will recall we supported the turnaround plan. It was implemented with the hope it would turn around the fortunes of the SABC, but the turnaround plan never turned the finances of the SABC.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are back to where we were, if not in a worse position than when we started with a bailout,\u201d Mapulane.<\/p>\n
Parliament was told that fundamental interventions must be made at the SABC and that the board was in the process of developing a turnaround plan.<\/p>\n
The SABC has previously\u00a0warned<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0that it will collapse financially if it does not receive an urgent cash injection from the government and fundamentally change its operating model.<\/p>\n The SABC is in extreme financial distress and could be forced to apply for business rescue, according to the group\u2019s CFO, Yolande van Biljon.<\/p>\n Van Biljon told Parliament that revenue underperformed by 27% compared to its budget and was 8% lower than the previous financial year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bottom has dropped out of our revenue generation initiatives, and as a consequence, the SABC\u2019s loss increased by R949 million to R1.2 billion,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n One of the main reasons for the SABC\u2019s poor financial performance is that people are not paying for TV licenses.<\/p>\n The state broadcaster\u2019s TV licence revenue declined from R968 million in 2019 to R741 million in 2023.<\/p>\n The SABC billed R4.5 billion in TV licence fees in the last financial year, but, as in previous years, it collected far less.<\/p>\n This translates into a TV licence evasion rate of 84% as debt collection agencies failed to convince people to pay. It is up from 69% four years ago.<\/p>\n Van Biljon said it could be liquidated if the group cannot sort out its financial situation.<\/p>\n This article was first published by Daily Investor<\/a><\/strong> and is reproduced with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n National Treasury rejected the SABC’s request for R1.5 billion in additional funding to prevent financial collapse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341119,"featured_media":499077,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80335],"tags":[35,66334,19949],"class_list":["post-514697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing","tag-headline","tag-philly-mapulane","tag-south-african-broadcasting-corporation-sabc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514697"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNow read:\u00a0SABC fails to pay R745-million bill for sending out its TV signal<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"