{"id":421452,"date":"2020-07-31T11:27:40","date_gmt":"2020-07-31T09:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=421452"},"modified":"2020-07-31T11:27:40","modified_gmt":"2020-07-31T09:27:40","slug":"if-we-just-do-these-things-we-will-see-a-remarkable-turnaround-at-state-companies-kieswetter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business-opinion\/421452\/if-we-just-do-these-things-we-will-see-a-remarkable-turnaround-at-state-companies-kieswetter\/","title":{"rendered":"If we just do these things, we will see a remarkable turnaround at state companies: Kieswetter"},"content":{"rendered":"

South African Revenue Service (SARS) commissioner Edward Kieswetter says that political interference is undermining the commercial viability of the country’s state owned enterprises.<\/p>\n

Participating in a webinar hosted by Government Technical Advisory Centre on Thursday (30 July), Kieswetter said that if he were the chief executive of a state owned company today, he would ask for a clear mandate, “and then to give me the scope and the room to do what I have to do, and then fire me if I don’t perform”.<\/p>\n

“If you don’t know what you stand for, you fall for anything.”<\/p>\n

He was commenting on a paper published by the National Planning Commission (NPC) in June, on the contribution of state-owned enterprises in achieving the 2030 vision of the National Development Plan (NDP).<\/p>\n

The Position Paper focuses on Eskom, Transnet and Prasa and makes recommendations in respect of governance, finance, market structure and government policy and processes.<\/p>\n

The paper is out for public comment<\/a><\/strong>, with the final version expected to be handed to president Cyril Ramaphosa in August.<\/p>\n

Kieswetter, said that he was part of a leadership team that turned Eskom from an ailing utility, into a globally admired utility in mid-1999 to the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

He said there was a time when SAA was one of the leading airlines globally, while Transnet was also running efficiently.<\/p>\n

“We actually know how to do this, and we mustn\u2019t over-complicate it. We can draw on the experience of the 90s and early 2000s,” Kieswetter said.<\/p>\n

“For one, there was no political interference. The politicians stayed out of the engine room and that was important.”<\/p>\n

Secondly, he said there was sound governance. \u201cThe roles between the shareholder, board and management was clearly defined, and adequately implemented.”<\/p>\n

He said that there was also a very clear culture of accountability. “We have to be bolder about dealing with corruption. A lot of the inefficiency that has come about, that has bloated the cost that has made these institutions unviable…is because of the cost that was added.”<\/p>\n

He said that when the state started intervening, and manipulating the commercial dynamics – is when it lost the commercial integrity of institutions like Eskom.<\/p>\n

Kieswetter stressed that it is important to appoint competent managers to be able to hold them accountable.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we just do those things, we will see a remarkable turnaround in these state owned enterprises,” he said.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Eskom to cancel R14 billion contract after probe findings<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South African Revenue Service (SARS) commissioner Edward Kieswetter says that political interference is undermining the commercial viability of the country’s state owned enterprises.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":299752,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1164,26],"class_list":["post-421452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-opinion","tag-eskom","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421452"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421554,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421452\/revisions\/421554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}