Madam Chair, hon Minister, Deputy Minister and my colleagues, today as we debate the Budget Vote of the Department of Public Enterprises, we need to look objectively at its mission and analyse its successes and failures.
People nowadays talk about challenges, in almost everything, in a school, in an institution, in companies, in entities, maybe even on a farm, maybe even here in Parliament. I wonder what happened to problems. I don't think that by using the new terminology of "challenges" it is being suggested that we are rubbing the term "problem" from every dictionary. [Laughter.]
The duty of the parliamentary portfolio committee is to monitor, assess and keep in check the executive, and therefore government departments and the institutions they are responsible for. The Department of Public Enterprises is responsible for state-owned enterprises, nine of them. I will only deal with three of these, and they are Transnet, SAA and SA Express, as my colleagues have already dealt with the other enterprises. My approach will be to deal with the objectives of the establishment of these enterprises and not to bore you with their operational information, which anyone can access on their websites, or even get their reports and business plans, which are freely available, especially to the opposition.
We are talking about three entities which have got, relatively, a combined size by asset base, as at 2007-08, of R117,6 billion, with Transnet having R98,9 billion, SAA R17,6 billion and SA Express R1,1 billion. SA Express became solvent in the financial year 2007-08 and has sustained and improved on this status. This is what we expect from entities that belong to our people, the public. We are also happy that SA Express won the overall Q400 Airline Reliability Performance Award for the Q400 aircraft type from Bombardier, and also that they have been awarded a contract to carry all the teams domestically during the Fifa Confederations Cup, which should be happening to almost all state-owned enterprises, relatively speaking, which means that other sister entities are not so good. [Interjections.] It does not mean that SA Express is the best, is it just better than the others.
The SAA turnaround strategy, called Bambanani, was supposed to have rescued the airline from its financial woes, but with the rising oil prices and the strike in the 2004-05 financial year, this turnaround strategy was ineffective. We haven't heard of any other strategy. I think we need "Bambanani 2". [Laughter.] The overall picture is that SAA is operating at a loss. Despite all these challenges, it is imperative for SAA management and board members to commit themselves to turning the fortunes of the airline.
As I said earlier on, I am not going to get into the operational nitty- gritty of these entities but will give the political overview as clearly articulated in Polokwane by my organisation, the ANC, which, by the way, is the ruling party in this country. [Interjections.]
THE HOUSE CHAIRPERSON (Ms M N Oliphant): Order, please!