The Public Protector of South Africa, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, has remained defiant in the face of staunch criticism, claiming that her position of power and influence is sanctioned by God. It’s been an admittedly turbulent year for the Public Protector’s office. Numerous reports and orders of remedial action, concerning highly politicised controversies, have been challenged in..
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Public Protector Mkhwebane does a Hlaudi: ‘Only God can remove me’ – her utterances and general approach have left a bitter taste in the mouths of South Africans
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Dear Taxpayer, brace yourself for some more SHOCKING news:- Eskom: Yet another taxpayer-funded bailout looms amid court action
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Dig deep, Mzansi. Eskom wants your tax money again. Rumors of a fresh bailout have been sparked after a Treasury official said it’s a case of “when, not if”.
Power giants Eskom have suffered a double-blow this weekend after it emerged that they would need bailouts on top of bailouts to really get itself up and running again. However, their woes have intensified even further, after a local environmental group sued the government over their levels of pollution.
Let’s unpack this one bit at a time. As Bloomberg report, National Treasury Director General Dondo Mogajane said that the government is likely to commit billions more to the flailing utility, stating that they “don’t have a choice” in the matter.
Another bailout imminent for Eskom
Mogajane’s admission comes just months after Eskom secured R69 million from the government for the next three years. However, this came with a caveat – Presiden
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China is holding the ‘switch’ in it’s hand, doing business with them is dangerous, with another Eskom crisis, China withheld the R7bn loan, they already own one Eskom plant, Load-shedding highly possible
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Well, this doesn’t look too clever. It’s reported that Eskom will be R7bn lighter this month, after its Chinese lenders raised their concerns.
South Africa could be set for another round of drama from Eskom, as the ailing power utility has reportedly failed to receive R7 billion in loan payments initially set to come from the Chinese Development Bank (CDB).
That’s according to City Press, who have reported that the creditors do not trust their promises over proposed maintenance work. It would be the second time in just over two weeks that one of Eskom’s promised loans failed to materialize after the Brics New Development Bank also did not part with their billions.
Why haven’t Eskom received the loan?
On Easter Friday, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni was forced to grant the power giants an emergency bailout in order to meet salary demands and diesel costs. It’s reported that the CDB has taken note of their actions
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To start the new year ESKOM appointed new senior management staff, but is the load-shedding holiday over?
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Eskom intensified its plant maintenance and fast-tracked the recovery of stock levels from December 13 to January 13, when there was a low demand for electricity.
But Eskom’s energy availability factor for the year declined by 6.9% from 78.8% in 2017 to 71.9% in 2018, according to energy expert Chris Yelland. For the last week of December it reached a new low of 63%. The energy availability factor refers to the availability of Eskom’s plant fleet once they have taken into consideration planned maintenance and unplanned breakdowns.
Planned maintenance outages amounted to 15% of the outages in the third week of December and 18.4% in the last week, said Yelland.
Unplanned breakdown outages amounted to 19.5% and 17.5% of the fleet respectively.
Yelland said the high level of planned maintenance outages was expected because demand is low over the holiday period, allowing Eskom to do additional maintenance.
But, he said: “The leve
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