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Government Has Plans For A New State Bank

The National Treasury says they are actually progressing with plans to introduce a state bank.

The State Bank is aimed at providing financial assistance to the most vulnerable South Africans. The formation of the bank has been spoken about for over 10 years and many people have wondered and doubted if it will ever be launched.

Progress?

A presentation was made to Parliament during May 2021 reporting on progress. Basically, all progress is background technical stuff with little visible progress at this point so it is hard to know what is actually happening. At this point, it could still just be a lot of talk and no actual progress and few would notice.

Bye Bye Postbank?

The new bank may herald the end of Postbank as some in Government have called for it to be either incorporated or totally scrapped and replaced. Other government institutions focussing on finance and development finance could also be lumped into the new entity to give the bank something to do and unify these efforts.

‘The formation of the bank has been spoken about for over 10 years’

Development loans are excluded from current reckless lending criteria and could be given to people who may never pay the bank back.

The bank could also be used by the state to funnel state funds in certain situations to the banking sector (without it actually leaving state control). An example of this would be like now during the Pandemic & lockdown. Then the bank could be integral to assisting those who need loans but cannot prove they can afford to repay them (as is required of the other major banks).