The head of South Africa’s state power utility said the process of unbundling the firm into three units — almost seven years in the making — can only be completed if the massive overdue debt it’s owed by municipalities is reined in.
President Cyril Ramaphosa announced plans to split Eskom Holdings into generation, transmission and distribution businesses in February 2019 to help them raise funding and improve the management of their debt and costs.
The plan has hit multiple delays.
“The unbundling of the distribution business will not happen unless we can solve the municipal debt,” Eskom’s chief executive officer Dan Marokane said in an interview at the inaugural Bloomberg Africa Business Summit in Johannesburg on Tuesday.
The government is taking steps to intervene by helping the utility collect the arrears, which stands at around R100 billion and continues to mount.
Under Marokane, Eskom has stabilised the grid, increased the
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