{"id":293896,"date":"2019-01-17T07:07:03","date_gmt":"2019-01-17T05:07:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=293896"},"modified":"2019-01-17T07:07:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-17T05:07:03","slug":"eskom-said-to-be-pressured-on-plan-before-national-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/293896\/eskom-said-to-be-pressured-on-plan-before-national-budget\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom said to be pressured on plan before national budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article-content\">\n<p>South Africa\u2019s government is pushing Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd, the power utility with R419 billion ($31 billion) in debt, to present a credible turnaround strategy before the Feb. 20 budget presentation, a person familiar with the situation said.<\/p>\n<p>While the state-owned company has asked the national energy regulator for permission to raise power prices by 15% a year for three years, that request would still leave the utility needing R100 billion rand, the person said.<\/p>\n<p>The turnaround plan, initially scheduled for September, has been repeatedly delayed by management and President Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed an independent panel to come up with solutions for the company.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat task team is working vigorously to ensure that they come up with proposals,\u201d Ramaphosa told reporters in Johannesburg Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEskom has huge funding challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Eskom is seen as critical to South Africa\u2019s creditworthiness with two major credit rating companies assessing the country\u2019s debt as junk. A third, Moody\u2019s Investors Service, still rates the country as investment grade.<\/p>\n<p>Ramaphosa on Dec. 14 appointed a panel to advise the government on how to resolve the producer\u2019s operational, structural and financial challenges. The president met with the Eskom task team and Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe strategy is currently being discussed at shareholder level,\u201d Eskom spokeswoman, Dikatso Mothae, said in a reference to the government, which owns all of Eskom.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce that process has been concluded it will be shared with the public.\u201d<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/293684\/eskom-in-deeper-financial-crisis-with-record-loss\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Eskom in deeper financial crisis with record loss<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa\u2019s government is pushing Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd, the power utility with R419 billion ($31 billion) in debt, to present a credible turnaround strategy before the Feb. 20 budget presentation, a person familiar with the situation said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":288044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,26],"class_list":["post-293896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-eskom","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293896"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293898,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293896\/revisions\/293898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}