Johannesburg | Wednesday
THE Post Office has borrowed as much as R1-billion of depositors’ money held by the Postbank in a bid to ease its crippling cash flow problem and deliver social infrastructure to the poor, Business Day reported on Wednesday.
SA Post Office management moved yesterday to assure account holders that their money was not at risk.
CEO Maanda Manyatshe said that depositors’ funds had been guaranteed by government.
This had lead to another bout of speculation that government would have to step in and help the ailing organisation by re-instituting subsidies halted in 2000-01.
The Postbank is estimated to have more than 2-million account holders and a book of several billion rand.
Its customers include pensioners, unemployed people, migrant labourers, rural dwellers and students.
The SA Post Office was due to report a loss of more than R800-million in the year ended March 2001, the year in which it was scheduled to break even under the now defunct management contract with New Zealand’s Transend Worldwide, the newspaper said. – Sapa