The department of public enterprises believes the Shareholder Management Bill should be fast-tracked to allow tighter oversight over state-owned enterprises, Deputy Public Enterprises Minister Phumulo Masualle said on Wednesday.
Masualle said the bill remained in the pipeline and there was a hope that it would one of a number of measures brought before Cabinet to turn around the fortunes of the country's troubled state-owned enterprises.
"There is a thinking that we should take it back as the department to see if we cannot achieve that in a much shorter time," he told Parliament's portfolio committee on public enterprises.
The remark followed a presentation to the committee on the department's annual plans and budget.
The bill aims to establish a legal framework in which all parastatals operate and to ensure that their boards and executives are held accountable.
It has been in the pipeline for years and is intended to address the concerns raised by the Presidential Review Committee on state-owned enterprises, which was appointed by former president Jacob Zuma in 2011.
Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Natasha Mazzone deplored the delays in acting on the findings of the commission, and said attempts to rid state-owned companies of corruption had been obstructed by appointing director-generals of departments in an acting capacity and replacing them roughly every six months.
"Every time a DG comes in they would last for six months until they have gotten too much information and were posing a threat to state capture.... I have to assume this has been done deliberately."