South African Airways is no longer technically insolvent almost two years after it exited business rescue, South Africa’s National Treasury has reported to parliament.

According to ch-aviation.com, During an online presentation to the Standing Committee on Appropriations on February 15, 2023, Chief Director of State-Owned Enterprises Ravesh Rajlal told the parliamentary watchdog that SAA had a net equity value of ZAR1 billion rand (USD55.4 million) on December 31, 2022. The South African Airways Group’s net loss for the first three quarters of FY2022/23 was ZAR50 million (USD2.7 million), a significant improvement on the budgeted loss of ZAR637 million (USD35.3 million).

SAA exited business rescue on April 30, 2021, after having been in administration since December 2019. The flag carrier resumed commercial flights on September 23, 2021. A long-negotiated semi-privatisation deal between the government and the Takatso Consortium, its preferred strategic equity partner (SEP), for a 51% stake in the airline, is still under regulatory scrutiny.

Responding to a question on the SEP progress, Rajlal said there were two outstanding issues that needed to be addressed: “In order for progress to be made on the SEP, there are literally two outstanding issues, that we are aware of, that deal with some of the outstanding liabilities to the concurrent creditors and the unflown ticket liabilities. Once that has been addressed, we obviously will have some progress or some traction in terms of what’s happening on the SAA front.”

SAA’s budget subsidiary Mango Airlines (MNO, Johannesburg O.R. Tambo) is in provisional liquidation, with its administrator taking legal steps to force public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan to decide on a proposed sale to an unnamed interested investor.