South Africa’s Finance minister Pravin Gordhan has warned that state-owned entities will no longer be eligible to bailouts and some of them may have to be shut down or rationalized in planned reforms program.

Gordhan, who was recently re-appointed as Finance Minister by President Jacob Zuma, was read the country’s budget on Wednesday. His budget is expected to steer Africa’s second largest economy from  the edge of recession and junk rating by global rating agencies Fitch and Standards and Poors.

Financial bailouts for state-owned companies, including electricity distributor Eskom and national carrier South African Airways (SAA), have weighed on the government treasury, which has shelled out billions of rands in guarantees and loan to keep them afloat.

According to CNBC Africa, the government has provided electricity firm Eskom with 10 billion rand ($699 million) in equity, with an additional 13 billion rand expected by March 2016.

Total guarantees given to loss-making national carrier South African Airways amount to 14.4 billion rand.

Gordhan, who is struggling to keep spending in  check to control a growing budget deficit, said at a pre-budget briefing on Wednesday the word “bailout” must be removed from the state’s dictionary.

He however warned against jumping to conclusion that the state was planning to “privatize” these companies.

While the number of state-owned companies may reduce under a rationalizations program to carried out by  Presidential Review Commission, others may be phased out as government takes “minority equity” in them or “co-invest”, Gordhan said.,

“The strength of our major state-owned companies does not lie in protecting their dominant monopoly positions, but in their capacity to partner with business investors, industry, mining companies, property and logistics developers…” he said when delivering the Budget to the National Assembly.

He said government guarantees totaling 467 billion rands was a “source of pressure on the sovereign rating.”

“The guarantees will place more strain on the central government,” Mark le Roux, who oversees fixed income investments at Coronation Asset Management, told Bloomberg. “It’s just another element of pressure coming through.”