[SPECIAL REPORT/ PODCAST] ‘The Eskom exemption was not meant to conceal any fraud or corruption,' says Shabeer Khan, Accountant-General at National Treasury. MoneywebNews Eskom Ryk_van_Niekerk
You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here. RYK VAN NIEKERK: Last night I spoke to Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana about the withdrawal of the controversial exemptions the National Treasury granted Eskom last week. The exemptions would’ve allowed Eskom not to disclose the extent of any irregular, wasteful and fruitless expenditure in its annual financial statements. However, these still had to be included in its annual report.
The minister did indicate yesterday in parliament that the Treasury may have underestimated the sensitivity around the entity in which we granted the exemption. And, considering the importance of Eskom and the impact it has on the economy, we should have pre-empted it. And the minister said there are a lot of lessons to learn, and perhaps there should have been a lot broader consultation on the matter. The law gives the minister the power to really run this exemption.
May I answer it in two ways? Firstly, in terms of the Public Finance Management Act, the board as the accounting authority is responsible for ensuring that Eskom implements the control to adequately address some of these shortcomings we have seen. So currently the board is tasked with this responsibility, and obviously the shareholder, the Department of Public Enterprises, will then ensure and oversee that these steps and these creative measures are being taken.
The fundamental issue that they’ve written to us [about] and they’ve cited in the letter is around the rating agencies and how they assess them, but certainly it is around the qualifications that they will get around these traditional requirements, and what that means for their loans with lenders.
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