By REGINALD KANYANE
24 May 2025– The Portfolio Committee on Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation welcomed the briefing it received from the Socio-Economic Impact Assessment (SEIA) on the envisaged centralized, state-owned holding company, which will oversee and manage a portfolio of strategic SOEs, aiming to improve their governance, streamline oversight, and promote commercial sustainability. In its recommendations to the committee, the SEIA said studies show that good governance was critical to the performance and viability of SOEs and this is also attributed to the country’s stance of tackling fraud and corruption.
For SOEs to optimally achieve their role to the country’s developmental agenda, the SEIA unit said, there is a need to strengthen the link between SOEs and the public developmental goals, improve incentives and enhance governance.
The Chairperson of the Committee, Teliswa Mgweba said some members of the committee expressed a concern that the process of establishing a holding company will be cumbersome and expensive. Mgweba said an amount of R615 million has been requested from the National Treasury by the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation to start operation of the holding company for the first three years.
“Thereafter, its operations will be funded from dividends to be received from subsidiaries. The committee told the SEIA unit that the risk assessment report lacked in the presentation the unit delivered to the committee.
“The committee told the unit to go back to do a deeper and wider analysis that should cover, among other things, longer term possibilities of viability, sustainability and socio-economic impact of the new model,” she said.
Mgweba further told the unit that it will be invited by the committee in a week’s time to come back to present the latest impact analysis report to the committee and the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation will also be invited. She added that they urged the unit to ensure that it comes back with a concrete and scientific report that covers the areas that were highlighted by members of the committee.
“We appreciate the briefing which the committee received from the unit and thank you for the great effort you made on its production. Ensure that you improve on it for the achievement of the objectives of the envisaged legislation,” stressed Mgweba.
The Guardian 