While the national company ESKOM is unable to provide for the country’s needs, President Cyril Ramaphosa plans to create competition in the energy sector.
Le Monde
The annoyance has given way to uncertainty. After weeks of closer power cuts, companies in South Africa, small and large, suffer in terms of productivity but also costs, while they would prefer to get to forget the post-Pandemic blues.
At the native Rebels, a bar with a view of the immense Township of Soweto, near Johannesburg, the generator, who takes over from the current as soon as he disappears, largely cums profits, confides to AFP Co -manager Masechaba Nonyane, 33 “we thought that the Covid had been weighed on us. Now, we pay eight hours a day without juice”, jokes the trendy young woman: “very prejudicial, it starts our results.”
The country is familiar with these load shedding, but their frequency has recently intensified. Until stadium 6 (on a scale of 8) for two weeks in July, the worst level since the end of 2019. Since then, the cuts, less numerous, have been daily and darkened the mood of this southern winter end. After years of mismanagement and corruption, the national company ESKOM is unable to produce enough energy to provide for the country’s needs. Its coal power plants (80 % of electricity in South Africa) are aging and require repairs.
Each “stadium” of electricity deprivation costs the country the equivalent of 29 million euros per day, according to a government declaration in March. The result is a disastrous spiral, affirms to AFP Ismail Fasanya, lecturer in economics at the University of Witwatersrand: “Deltages will lead to other job losses, which will lead to a drop in production. This will affect expenses. This will further affect growth. “
Having to buy and operating generators represents an additional cost, discouraging some from creating their business or foreigners from investing, says the economist. The impact on job creation is particularly worrying, with an aggravated unemployment rate at 34.5 % by the destructive effects of the covid-19 pandemic.