Latest news with #R520m
IOL News
16-07-2025
- Business
- IOL News
Calls for independent review of Treasury's funding decisions for SA Post Office
The BRPs said that Sapo was currently operating under severe austerity measures, which curtailed its operational capacity and threaten its ongoing services. Image: Bhekikhaya Mabaso/Independent Newspapers The Deputy Minister for Communications and Digital Technologies, Mondli Gungubele, has advocated for an independent system to review the National Treasury's decisions regarding urgent funding requirements. This call to action follows the controversial rejection by Treasury of a R3.8 billion proposed rescue package intended for the beleaguered South African Post Office (Sapo), which Gungubele on Tuesday argued had successfully navigated the business rescue process. "I wish there would be an independent system that scrutinises that. In our view, with all the calculations we have made, if we were to talk about cost-benefit analysis, had that R3.8bn been paid, a lot would have been saved rather than lost," Gungubele told the Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts on Tuesday. "But it is the thing of Treasury. I am saying I wish there could be an independent system to deal with such rejections or acceptance when it comes to crises of this nature." Gungubele's support for the Sapo Business Rescue Practitioners (BRPs), Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Ramos, highlighted that while all necessary processes had been executed, the pivotal funding gap still loomed large. The BRPs said that Sapo was currently operating under severe austerity measures, which curtailed its operational capacity and threaten its ongoing services. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ "It is not ideal but we are up to date with all our payments. Right now we are paying creditors in the course of business except of course the R120 million. In November or December, the entity will need more working capital requirement, which only would not arise if we had received the R3.8bn," Rooplal said. "We are looking at some deferral arrangement for the R520m, which is conditional upon funding. It's not a guaranteed payment to creditors." Rooplal said the delayed major portion of the rescue plan was the payment of the 18 cents per rand top up to the creditors, which once paid would have dealt with all creditors according to the plan. He said the next thing would have been to have funding towards working capital and steered toward the right investment in uplifting the structure and even that we would have worked with the incoming board. "The one aspect is around strategic private partnerships. That's in progress. That progress has been lifted up to the joint task team and rightly so because you need to involve Treasury to unlock funding and to help to assess the prospective partnerships," Rooplal said. "We believe its good governance and it is sitting with the right decision makers. We add the BRPs to the joint task team, that in a nutshell is what the dashboard looks like." "There is only literally one aspect left for us to set up the plan and that is to pay the R520m to agency and concurrent creditors, and we would be in a position to discharge. But that obviously depends on funding as we highlighted." The BRPs further detailed their financial landscape, indicating that the R7.4bn in compromised creditor claims had left the entity in a precarious position. "We would have discharged this months ago. Had the funding come in sooner, we would have been able to implement the last outstanding items," Rooplal said. "But unfortunately we had to make a plan so to speak and we had to press the entity back to austerity mode so it's really limiting our ability to expand and spend because we don't have the money to spend on anything other than keeping the lights on and basic services moving. "Currently, funding available is Universal Services Obligation funding and we all know that it must go to a specific purpose. That R572m then there is the Temporary Employee Relief Scheme funding of R381m, which has a specific purpose. We then depend on the revenue that Sapo generates on a general basis." BUSINESS REPORT
TimesLIVE
16-07-2025
- Health
- TimesLIVE
SA gets R520m to buy the twice-a-year anti-HIV jab — but there's a snag
South Africa has accepted an offer of just over $29m (about R520m) from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria to buy the twice-a-year anti-HIV jab, lenacapavir, that research shows could help to end Aids in the country, says health department spokesperson Foster Mohale. But there's a snag. The country isn't getting extra money from the fund to buy the medicine; it has to use cash from a grant that it has already been awarded and that was cut by 16% in June. Moreover, the fund, at this stage, won't tell the health department — or any of the other eight countries it has selected for early rollout — how much they're paying lenacapavir's maker, Gilead Sciences, for the product. Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela, the CEO of the country's medicine regulator, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (Sahpra), told Bhekisisa it aims to have lenacapavir registered in South Africa before the end of the year. According to the health department's head of procurement, Khadija Jamaloodien, the lenacapavir funds from the Global Fund will become available in October, when the rollout period of South Africa's next grant, known as Grant Cycle 7, kicks in. But rollout — likely in early 2026 — can only start once Sahpra has registered the medicine, the country's essential medicines list committee has reviewed and recommended lenacapavir, procurement processes are in place and health workers and clinics have all they need to hand the drug safely to patients. Two studies released last year showed the medicine completely protects young women from contracting the virus and works almost as well for men, transgender and gender-nonbinary people. In fact, a modelling study shows that if between two and four million HIV-negative people in South Africa use the jab every year over the next eight years, the medication could end Aids as a public health threat by 2032. Ending Aids as a public health threat means reaching a stage where fewer people are getting newly infected with HIV than the number of people with HIV who are dying (increasingly for other reasons than HIV, for example old age). According to the latest Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and Aids (UNAids) report, which was released last week, 170,000 people got newly infected with HIV in 2024, while there were 53,000 Aids-related deaths. The Global Fund money for South Africa is, however, not nearly enough to put two to four million people per year in South Africa on the lenacapavir jab — and even if it was, the country's health system won't be able to roll the medicine out that fast, scientists and policymakers say. Will the US help to pay for the jab? The fund's offer follows the body's announcement on July 9, that it has the 'ambition' to finance enough lenacapavir for two million HIV-negative people — in the low- and middle-income countries it supports — over the next three years. But fulfilling this ambition will depend on whether the governments of wealthy countries give enough money to the Fund in its next replenishment round. The US government's Aids fund, Pepfar, was originally going to help to pay to roll out lenacapavir in poorer countries. And, though some activists say it's still possible for the US administration to come on board (lenacapavir is mentioned in President Donald Trump's budget proposal for the next financial year, but is understood to be only for pregnant and breastfeeding women), it's not clear at all how this might happen after the Trump administration's drastic cuts to funding for HIV projects in countries including South Africa this year. The Global Fund's offer, however, is a way to get branded, 'bridging' doses from Gilead to South Africa while the world waits for cheaper generics to become available around 2027. 'We now stand at a moment of reckoning and a moment of choice,' Mitchell Warren, the executive director of the international advocacy organisation, Avac, told Bhekisisa at the 13th conference on HIV science in Kigali this week. 'While a lot of the choices over the last six months have been made by an American politician [Donald Trump] who doesn't care about the pandemic or science generally, our choice is to make decisions based on the science that we all now know. Which is that lenacapavir is our most potent opportunity.' Countries have to budget just under R600 per dose Jamaloodien, however, cautions further discussions with the Global Fund and Gilead will be needed about the governance around the pricing of the product. 'We have a transparent pricing system, guided by the Public Finance Management Act. Even if we procure medicine with Global Fund money, we have to follow the same rules that the Treasury requires us to follow with tenders, which includes revealing the price at which the medicine is bought,' Jamaloodien says.
