Cabinet has tasked Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan and Public Enterprises Minister Barbara Hogan to prepare a report card on the state of State-owned enterprises (SoEs), government spokesperson Themba Maseko said on Wednesday.

The report, Cabinet decided, should focus on the existing shareholder compacts, as well as the state of finances and turnaround strategies at the enterprises.

"The Minister of Public Enterprises was also directed to reinstitute the Inter-Ministerial Committee on State Assets to oversee the functioning of these entities," Maseko said.

The Cabinet resolution came as several State enterprises were facing either financial or leadership distress stress, notably power utility Eskom, which was still uncertain on how it would fund its R365-billion build programme; Transnet, which is in the midst of an unsavoury leadership contest; and South Africa Airways and Denel, which were both seeking further bail-outs.

The Transnet saga, in particular, had placed Hogan under strain, given that it had left her wedged between two contradictory forces: the utility's board on the one hand, which was supporting the suspension of, and disciplinary proceeding against, Transnet Freight Rail CEO Siyabonga Gama; and on the other, her party, the African National Congress (ANC), and at least two of her Cabinet colleagues, Jeff Radebe and Siphiwe Nyanda, who believe Gama should be appointed as the permanent replacement to Maria Ramos, who departed Transnet for Absa in February.

But it also came as both Parliament and the ANC's own allies, the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, were raising questions about the role of SoEs in delivering on the so-called "developmental State" mandate.

The SACP published a discussion document in September, in which it argued that government departments were "often turned into beggars at the doors of the boards of SoEs and agencies".

"The boards, in turn, often hide behind their 'fiduciary duties' in order to ignore or deliberately undermine departmental directives," the document read, adding that SoEs were often failing to respond to the strategic developmental mandate of government.

Similar anxieties were expressed recently by Parliament's public enterprises portfolio committee chairperson, Vytjie Mentor, who, in an interview with Engineering News, questioned whether the mandates of the SoEs and their governance structures were properly aligned to South Africa's developmental challenges.

Mentor indicated that Parliament hoped to facilitate a national conference on the matter in June next year.

On the other hand, South African business, through Business Unity South Africa, had appealed to government to review the business models of its SoEs, so as to ensure "sustainability" , as well as to facilitate further private sector involvement in the operating and funding of the SoEs.