The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) has applied for R6.9-billion in government funding over the next three years, according to the national treasury.
Part of the funds requested are intended to finance new projects for the broadcaster, including a 24-hour news channel which it is calling “News24”, apparently unaware of any objections Naspers might have to the name.
Presenting before Parliament’s portfolio committee on communications on Tuesday, national treasury official Avril Halstead broke the application down into R384.33-million in the 2011/12 financial year, R2.026-billion in the 2012/13 year, and R4.52-billion in the 2013/14 financial year.
“If the SABC does not get this funding, there is a projected shortfall of R3.7-billion in three years time,” Halstead said.
The money would be on top of the R1.47-billion in government guaranteed loans facilitated for the public broadcaster in 2009 after it ran into R8-billion’s worth of debt.
According to SABC chairperson Ben Ngubane, the corporation had only used R1-billion of that facility made available by Nedbank, and it was in the process of paying it off.
“We are able to pay off R50-million per month,” he told the committee.
According to the National Treasury, the department of communications needed to assess the SABC’s application and submit a request for funding for consideration in the national budget process.
“For the 2012 budget, the focus is on finding savings and reprioritising spending as very little additional funding will be made available,” the presentation notes said.
It went on to say that the SABC’s request for funding in 2011/12 could not be considered as additional funding was only for unforeseen and unavoidable expenditure.
The national treasury said that the business cases for SABC’s planned 24-hour news channel “News24” and its sports channel, and its migration to digital terrestrial TV broadcasting were still outstanding.
It said that funding requests were to cover operational expenditure, and that the SABC had committed itself to cover the operational costs of migration to digital terrestrial TV from the present analogue system and that it would only require funding for capital expenditure. — I-Net Bridge