Chartered Accountant and Commentator, Khaya Sithole, says exempting Eskom from disclosing irregular, wasteful and fruitless expenditure in its financial reports will not address the power utility’s problems including rolling blackouts.
On Wednesday, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana temporarily withdrew the gazetting of the exemption when he appeared before Parliament’s Finance cluster committees.
Sithole says this has severely compromised the credibility of the National Treasury and set a bad precedent among state-owned enterprises.
“Every single board of directors is now going to say, ‘Why don’t we get the same concession?’ So it creates that sense of confusion because now we do not know what the parameters are until you actually ask National Treasury directly.”
“You cannot understand why the Transnet exemption was granted. You cannot understand why the Eskom exemption was granted. That means that we have to dig so much just to understand what the principles are. It simply means that there are no principles underpinning this process,” adds Sithole.
The video below is the full interview with Khaya Sithole:
