{"id":65184,"date":"2014-08-07T12:59:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-07T10:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=65184"},"modified":"2014-08-07T12:59:23","modified_gmt":"2014-08-07T10:59:23","slug":"eskom-needs-r250-billion-to-avoid-being-junked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/65184\/eskom-needs-r250-billion-to-avoid-being-junked\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom needs R250 billion to avoid being junked"},"content":{"rendered":"

South African energy utility Eskom needs to find R250 billion of support or it could get cut to junk status and drag the country’s credit rating down, according to Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Citing Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown, the report said that this needs to happen in a matter of weeks, as ratings agency Standard & Poor’s could downgrade the company in mid-September.<\/p>\n

Eskom is currently rated BBB-, the lowest investment grade at S&P.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking at how to get Eskom out of its trouble because it has a short time to prove it is on a good footing to credit agencies,\u201d Bloomberg quoted the minister as saying.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main thing is to prevent a downgrade on Eskom from the credit agencies and the country as a whole from getting downgraded.\u201d<\/p>\n

S&P notes that Eskom’s total debt could exceed as much as R350 billion.<\/p>\n

According to the report, prices may have to increase even further to plug the gap.<\/p>\n

This is off the back of news that electricity prices could increase by as much as 14% in 2015, after Eskom was given approval to recoup R7.82 billion in lost revenue.<\/p>\n

The power utility is also owed R3 billion from municipalities which have not paid their bills.<\/p>\n

Dampening privatisation talk<\/h3>\n

On Tuesday, 5 August, Business Day cited a number of unnamed Cabinet Ministers and government officials, who reportedly advocated for the unbundling and partial privatisation of Eskom.<\/p>\n

The DA welcomed the murmurings, saying that “it would be hugely beneficial to our economy”.<\/p>\n

“It would take financial pressure off the state by getting private investors to help fund electricity supply generation,\u201d the party said.<\/p>\n

However, Brown dismissed the talk of privatisation, calling it\u00a0misguided, and saying the debate should instead be about the long-term resolution to the country\u2019s energy challenges.<\/p>\n

\u201cEskom is critical for Government to implement its developmental agenda. It would be a grave mistake to privatise this critical player in the economy,” she said.<\/p>\n

“To my knowledge, Cabinet has not discussed the matter of privatisation and there is no need to unnecessarily raise temperatures around this matter.”<\/p>\n

More on Eskom<\/h3>\n

Privatising Eskom beneficial to SA economy<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Eskom hiking electricity prices<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Eskom owed R3 billion by municipalities<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Eskom reports profit surge<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South African energy utility Eskom needs to find R250 billion of support or it could get cut to junk status – dragging the country’s credit rating down, according to Bloomberg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":56301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[1164,26,8483,3231],"class_list":["post-65184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-eskom","tag-headline","tag-lynne-brown","tag-sp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65184","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=65184"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65190,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65184\/revisions\/65190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}