Administrators for South Africa’s loss-making state airline have been given an extra month to complete a turnaround plan, Bloomberg News reported. The so-called Business Rescue Practitioners can now file their report on South African Airways by the end of March, they said in a statement on Friday. A majority of creditors agreed to the extension. Bloomberg News earlier reported the development. South Africa’s government placed SAA into a local form of bankruptcy protection late last year, a move designed to end a cycle of state bailouts and mounting losses.

South Africa’s government has announced plans to slash its public sector wage bill, setting President Cyril Ramaphosa on a collision course with the country’s powerful trade unions as he seeks to fix the biggest ever fiscal deficit in the post-apartheid era and avoid another ratings downgrade, the Financial Times reported. Tito Mboweni, Mr Ramaphosa’s finance minister, said in a budget speech on Wednesday that the state plans to cut 160bn rand ($10.5bn) from civil-servant pay in the next three years in order to halt a rapid rise in public debts between 2020 and 2021.

South Africa almost doubled the level of funding for the national airline to 16.4 billion rand ($1.1 billion), cash that will go toward supporting a restructuring plan for the technically insolvent carrier, Bloomberg News reported. The bailout will be used to service and pay debt previously guaranteed by the state over the “medium term,” Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said in his budget speech in Cape Town on Wednesday. The amount compares with 9.2 billion rand earmarked for South African Airways in October.

Hard-currency bond investors have already downgraded South Africa to junk. The premium investors demand to the country’s dollar debt rather than U.S. Treasuries climbed above the emerging-market average in October, shortly before Moody’s Investors Service cut the country’s credit outlook to negative, Bloomberg News reported. It has now been above the mean for the longest period since Bloomberg started tracking the data in 1997. Previously, South Africa’s sovereign spread crossed above the average for brief periods only during times of stress.

South Africa’s rising country risk is putting upward pressure on interest rates, even as inflation expectations decline, with credit-rating companies contributing to the negative sentiment, according to the central bank, Bloomberg News reported. Moody’s Investors Service cut its 2020 economic growth forecast for South Africa to 0.7% from 1% on Monday and said the nation’s relatively high real interest rates are constraining expansion.

The rand strengthened the most among emerging-market currencies on Friday as investors assessed President Cyril Ramaphosa’s pledges to overhaul South Africa’s electricity industry and curb government spending, Bloomberg News reported. While offering little that is new on the planned restructuring of Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., Ramaphosa announced sweeping measures Thursday to address power shortages and reduce dependence on the debt-stricken utility.

An application by two trade unions to block job cuts at struggling state-owned airline South African Airways (SAA) was rejected by the country’s labour court on Friday. SAA is fighting for survival after being placed under a form of bankruptcy protection in December, Reuters reported. The unions argued that SAA’s administrators were planning far-reaching job cuts without holding the proper consultations required by the country’s labour law.

South African state airline SA Express is under a form of bankruptcy protection known as business rescue, a spokeswoman for the airline said on Thursday. Her comments come after SA Express lost a court battle with a contractor, logistics firm Ziegler, earlier this month, Reuters reported. SA Express, which flies to domestic and regional destinations, is a separate business from much larger state carrier South African Airways (SAA), which entered business rescue in December.

South African labor union Solidarity began a legal process to block plans to use the state pension fund to help debt-stricken power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd, Bloomberg News reported. The action adds to opposition from other employee groups resisting a proposal by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the nation’s biggest labor organization, to cut Eskom’s debt by 254 billion rand ($17.2 billion). Cosatu had expected to reach a pact with business on the idea before President Cyril Ramaphosa presents his state-of-the-nation address on Thursday, but has pushed back that timeline.

Squabbling between South Africa’s government and the state-owned airline’s bankruptcy administrator is threatening its chances of survival, Investec Ltd.’s chief executive officer said. President Cyril Ramaphosa in December placed debt-ridden South African Airways in business rescue, a local form of bankruptcy protection, Bloomberg News reported. Over the past few days, there’s been a flurry of conflicting messages from the government and the business-rescue practitioners, leaving investors and customers unclear about whether the carrier has a future.