Source: Bloomberg/Mybroadband, 29 November 2021, photo credit: Space Coast Daily
South Africa will soon agree on a comprehensive, unified approach to turning around Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which is saddled with 402 billion rand ($25 billion) in debt, according to the minister who oversees the state power utility.
Eskom, which depends on coal for the bulk of its electricity generation, has subjected the country to intermittent rolling blackouts for more than a decade and accounts for about 40% of its climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
Wide-ranging and at times conflicting suggestions for fixing the company have been flighted by the National Treasury, the energy department and the utility itself.
Options on the table include selling some of its old coal plants and accelerating the retirement of others, capturing carbon emissions, getting the state to take over half of its debt and converting 82 billion rand of bonds held by a state-worker pension fund into equity.
“There is absolutely going to be one voice as we go forward into 2022 and one direction that we want to go in as well,” Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said in a Nov. 26 interview. Eskom “will look a lot different than it does today” by the end of the current administration’s term in 2024, he said.
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The South African Pork Producers’ Organisation (SAPPO) coordinates industry interventions and collaboratively manages risks in the value chain to enable the sustainability and profitability of pork producers in South Africa.
