Eskom diesel crisis – Treasury responds to calls for more money
National Treasury says it continues to engage with the Department of Public Enterprises and Eskom with the aim of identifying solutions to the purchase of diesel.
Treasury said it had noted the recent public interest and media queries requesting clarity about discussions to assist Eskom with the purchase of diesel.
“The staggered nature of the budget process, which allows for the necessary legislative and executive oversight as well as for well-informed planning about how to allocate the country’s scarce financial resources, makes it difficult to consider and accommodate any ad hoc funding requests outside of this process, especially large requests that are made at short notice.
“The budget process allows for government departments and state-owned entities to follow a set process to submit their funding requests to be considered for inclusion in the Budget, which is then approved by Parliament.”
Treasury said Eskom did not apply for funding through the budget process, and Eskom management should therefore take all necessary steps to ensure they secure the diesel needed to avert severe load shedding.
“That said, the National Treasury and the Minister of Finance are acutely aware of the impact that Eskom’s diesel shortages may have on already severe levels of load shedding,” it said.
Speaking to Bloomberg on Friday (2 December), finance minister Enoch Godongwana said that Eskom had put in a request for R19.5 billion to buy more diesel, however, the response was negative.
“We don’t have (the money),” Godongwana said.
While the power utility was able to secure around 50 million litres of diesel from PetroSA last week, this is only to be used in emergency situations and to keep the grid from a total collapse.
News24 reported this week that all the diesel the power utility was able to use had been burned up, exacerbating the breakdowns and other outages which led to stage 6 load shedding.
Load shedding was reduced to stage 5 on Friday (9 December) as planned, following urgent meetings with the Department of Public Enterprises.
However, Eskom is nowhere near being out of the woods with the current crisis as Unit 1 of the Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant is still scheduled to be pulled offline on Saturday, removing close to 1,000MW from the grid for the next six months.
With SA news
Read: Eskom forced to delay critical Koeberg outage to Saturday as load shedding pressures stick
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