The Public Investment Corporation plans to strengthen its monitoring of poorly managed state-owned enterprises, Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said yesterday. The PIC has R1.85-trillion in assets, which it invests on behalf of the Government Employees' Pension Fund, Unemployment Insurance Fund, Compensation Fund and other funds.It has about R197-billion invested in state-owned enterprises and holds more than half of the bonds issued by them.It has R3-billion invested in the Airports Company of SA, R8-billion in the Industrial Development Corporation, R16-billion in the Development Bank of Southern Africa, R19-billion in the Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority and about R89-billion in Eskom.Its exposure to the Land Bank is R10-billion, to Transnet R26.4-billion and to the SA National Roads Agency R26.3-billion.Jonas, who is also PIC chairman, appeared with the corporation's CEO, Dan Matjila, and members of Matjila's executive team, before parliament's standing committee on finance to present a strategic and corporate plan for SOEs.He said if their performance did not improve, the PIC would have to adopt a more cautious approach."The board [of the PIC] has taken a decision that we have to heighten our due diligence [in relation to state-owned enterprises]," Jonas said. "Nobody can deny that there are huge problems with SOEs. We must be more hesitant, more focused and reflective in our decisions to continue to invest if we do not see any visible change in some SOEs."A few were making progress, he said, but too slowly."We cannot continue investing in the same manner that we have been as if nothing [untoward] is happening in these SOEs," he said.Matjila assured DA finance spokesman David Maynier and Economic Freedom Fighters MP Floyd Shivambu that he had not met any members of the Gupta family to discuss investments and, as far as he was aware, neither had any members of his team.At the urging of the two MPs, the finance committee asked the PIC to provide it with a statement outlining its investment policy. ..