The BRPs have been given 25 days to produces a business rescue plan for the airline, committee chairman Mkhuleko Hlengwa said in a statement.

The statement followed Friday's meeting between Scopa, the BRPs, and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan.

"Five months have passed and the practitioners have not tabled a finalised plan," Hlengwa said.

During Friday's meeting, the committee was furnished with a draft business rescue plan. The late submission of this plan disadvantaged the committee and it could not engage the draft plan. The committee would be forced to set the date for the practitioners if they failed to set a date to finalise the plan themselves, he said.

Scopa also wanted a full schedule of the account of the fees for the BRPs, advisers, and all the practitioners involved. The committee had also requested the public enterprises department to provide a list of "these cost-cutting measures that the business rescue practitioner allege to have done". The committee would like to see whether these had been done correctly.

The committee had also resolved to schedule a meeting with South African Express in the next 14 days. South African Express had an obligation to account for what was happening at the airline, as taxpayers’ money was involved.

"Furthermore, Scopa believes that there is a need to conduct a proper analysis in order to ascertain where and when these challenges at SAA started. It is important for all who are responsible for the collapse of the airline to face consequences," Hlengwa said.

During Friday's meeting, the BRPs said a lack of funding severely hampered their work, while Gordhan questioned their spending decisions and their future objectives for SAA.

Dongwana said it was essential when trying to restructure a distressed business to have a clear commitment of funding and to receive the money within an agreed time frame. "It helps when you have the right amount of post-commencement finance and it helps a great deal if you are able to receive the money timeously. Without cash, it becomes an exercise in liquidation," Dongwana said.

The BRP team had done as much cost consolidation as possible, but creditors' insistence on cash or advance payment for services placed a severe strain on the liquidity of the operation. He said the deadline the team faced in terms of submitting a business rescue plan to government as the shareholder became impossible to meet as the Covid-19 pandemic struck and South Africa went into lockdown, and the company's aircraft were effectively grounded.

The business rescue operation had faced an extended deadline of the end of March, but requested an extension on 26 March as the landscape changed dramatically, he said.

The difficulties of the business rescue exercise were compounded when government signalled on April 10 that it would not accede to a request, filed eight days earlier, for more funding.

Gordhan replied that the tussle over funding and a viable restructuring plan, and which should come first, could be likened to a "chicken and egg" debate. However, in this case the answer was not obscure as usual.

"The answer is simple - clearly if money is to be spent, it must be spent in terms of the requirements of what a plan provides for," he said.

He insisted that, at present, government was still waiting for a comprehensive plan setting out a vision of reviving the airline as a viable entity not reliant on public handouts. "It is not the a question of supporting the plan. We don't have a plan, what we have is one version of the plan," he said.

Winding down the airline was not an alternative, and was not set out in the directives given to the BRPs. The team was given R5.5 billion to complete a business rescue process to resuscitate the airline.

Only at that point could the state agree to release further funding because it was clear how much this would entail and how it would be spent. Gordhan went as far as accusing Dongwana and his partners of petulance and possibly mala fides. "It is petulant for the practitioners to say 'you won't give us, so we'll wind it down'," he said.

Gordhan said the threat of liquidation posed the question of who this would benefit and how SAA's assets would be disposed of, bearing in mind that they were in fact state property. "Who is waiting in the wings to pick up what pieces at what price?" he asked.

Gordhan conceded that the task had been made more difficult by the impact of the coronavirus on the aviation business around the world. "It is going to be about three years for the aviation industry globally to recover in any shape or form." But he insisted that government's vision was rebirth of the national carrier as a sustainable company.

"A viable outcome should be a viable business - in inverted commas, a rescued business. Government made it quite clear that as far as government was concerned that restructuring must continue through the business rescue process."

SAA went into business rescue in December 2019.

African News Agency