Cape Town - The Special Appropriations Bill, that has given a bailout of R59billion to Eskom, has been sent to President Cyril Ramaphosa to be signed
into law.
This followed the adoption of the bill by Parliament this week and the national legislature confirmed in its documents that the bill has been sent to the president
for assent.
The law comes at the time opposition parties were complaining about the billions of rands thrown into Eskom.
Equal Education complained that the bailouts given to state-owned entities by National Treasury should have been given to schoolchildren.
It said there were many schools in rural provinces like the Eastern Cape and Limpopo which had no toilets, were dilapidated and had no infrastructure.
Finance Minister Tito Mboweni warned that SOEs posed a fiscal risk, and Eskom posed the biggest risk to the economy.
The government would not have money to pay creditors if Eskom collapsed. Mboweni said they would not allow Eskom to fail.
He said one of the measures to clamp down on bailouts was to provide these monies in the form of loans so that SOEs could pay it back, and added that the government must start doing things differently.
There was no accountability in how SOEs used money they got from the government and that had to stop, warned Mboweni.
The government injected billions of rands in SOEs in the past 20 years.
Opposition parties said the government must start acting tough and take action against those responsible for the poor financial performance of the entities.