Cape Town - The South African Broadcasting Corporation's
(SABC) interim board is contesting a R1bn contract, the broadcaster
reported on Tuesday.
The deal, which came to light in the board's examination of the
corporation's financial records, was revealed in a presentation
to Parliament's communications portfolio committee in Cape
Town.
Details could not be made public as the matter was under
investigation.
The SABC said criminal charges could be brought against entities
identified in the Auditor-General's report on the SABC. A
preliminary report had been forwarded to the police.
"There were meetings with the authorities to frame the charges
and the prosecution of claims. A final list of charges has been
framed and I think there are two possible criminal charges,"
said interim board chair Irene Charnley.
Turning a profit
The cash-strapped SABC will start turning a profit by 2012, MPs
heard on Tuesday.
"Losses will come down and the corporation [will] move to
profitability by March 2012," Charnley told the
committee.
The broadcaster planned to repay all its debts by the end of the
2014 financial year.
Over and above the R200m it was granted by the National Treasury
last week, the SABC has applied for a five-year government
guarantee of R1.4bn.
This would "allow the corporation to borrow money from
institutions", Charnley said.
On the R200m, she said the broadcaster would receive the funds
between November and March next year, and would use the money to
pay for commissioned local content programmes.
Costs rising steeply
Charnley told MPs the corporation's losses stood at R910m, but
that this figure was expected to start dropping, "even in this
financial year".
The figure would not rise, she assured the committee.
A "big problem" was costs, which had risen steeply, and
remained higher than the corporation's income.
The SABC had also run an overdraft of between R580m and R600m since
March, the start of the current financial year.
Cost-cutting measures and a turnaround strategy implemented by the
interim board in the past four-and-a-half months had saved the
corporation about R65m.
Charnley said the SABC was now "stable", and the interim
board was preparing to hand over to the recently-announced
permanent board in the middle of November.
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