The South African government needs money; that was the blunt message from the recent Medium Term Budget Policy Statements delivered Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene.

The easiest ways to get that money is to raise taxes, but rumours are circulating that they may sell some assets, JSE listed assets. The obvious one is VOD, worth some R28.2bn. But they also hold stakes in; SOL*, KIO*, ACL* and TKG and if all were sold that would raise over R80bn.

There are of course a bunch of political reasons why they want to hold on, for example TKG which when the Koreans wanted to buy a 20% stake the government nixed the idea. But R80bn would go a very long way to plugging that gapping revenue hole at treasury.