{"id":295992,"date":"2019-01-29T15:41:31","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T13:41:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=295992"},"modified":"2019-01-29T15:41:31","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T13:41:31","slug":"government-to-consider-splitting-eskom-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/295992\/government-to-consider-splitting-eskom-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Government to consider splitting Eskom: report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Government officials will meet in the coming days to debate\u00a0whether to break up state power firm Eskom to make it financially viable, reports <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/af.reuters.com\/article\/southAfricaNews\/idAFL5N1ZT4GX\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Reuters<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at a conference on Tuesday (29 January), public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said that\u00a0Eskom\u2019s fate will be debated at a cabinet meeting starting on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Should Eskom be unbundled into generation, transmission and distribution, as is the worldwide practice?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That is a debate we are going to have soon. And it is going to go beyond a debate because we need very fast movement,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Gordhan added that the government\u00a0would be willing to sell stakes in state firms such as Denel and South African Airways to private investors &#8220;once we get to a level of stability in some of these outfits&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The fiscus doesn\u2019t have space for endless bailouts,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Questioning survival<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Eskom aid earlier this week that its distressed financial position and rising municipal debt poses a risk to its sustainability.<\/p>\n<p>Rising municipal debt, coupled with Eskom\u2019s poor financial and operational performance pose a systemic risk to the sustainability of the company, said chief financial officer, Calib Cassim.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking at the Nersa public hearings to deal with Eskom\u2019s three-year tariff application in Bloemfontein, Cassim said the ballooning municipal debt, together with the rising Soweto debt, are no longer just an Eskom problem alone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What is clear is that Eskom cannot solve financial and operational sustainability challenges that it faces alone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The turnaround of Eskom is a journey over time that is highly dependent on the active involvement of the shareholder, Nersa and other stakeholders including customers,&#8221; said Cassim.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/293980\/why-youre-going-to-pay-more-for-eskoms-mistakes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Why you\u2019re going to pay more for Eskom\u2019s mistakes<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking at a conference on Tuesday (29 January), public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan said that\u00a0Eskom\u2019s fate will be debated at a cabinet meeting starting on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":289108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1164,26],"class_list":["post-295992","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\/295992","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":295996,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295992\/revisions\/295996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}