South African Airways (SA, Johannesburg O.R. Tambo) will likely require ZAR50billion (USD4.64billion) in private funding it it is to remain a going concern South African Minister of Public Enterprises, Lynne Brown, has said.

“We are looking at guarantees for funding for SAA. They have to meet conditions of the open market,” she told Bloomberg news in Johannesburg last week adding that funds would come from private investors in the form of loans or bonds and be backed by the Treasury.

The carrier has persistently relied on the national fiscus to prop up its operations in the face of growing regional and international competition. Despite generating cumulative losses of roughly ZAR16billion as of March 2013, Pretoria has rejected calls for SAA's privatization on the grounds that the carrier is a strategic asset and therefore must be kept going at all costs.

While nine turnaround plans have so far been drawn up with a view to turning the carrier into a profitable entity, none has so far been fully implemented.