The head of South Africa\u2019s state power utility, Eskom, said a government plan to spin off its transmission assets needs to be implemented in a way that is sustainable for the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eskom Chief Executive Officer Dan Marokane had welcomed an announcement in December by the nation\u2019s electricity minister that the utility would retain ownership of the national network of power lines, its most profitable division. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That plan was overruled in February by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president said the assets would be fully separated to support a broader process to liberalise the grid, bringing in private producers and traders.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe were clear about what we thought was right for the business and what we thought was right for the country, and the president thought otherwise,\u201d Marokane said in an interview at Bloomberg\u2019s Cape Town offices last week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe decision has been taken that we go in this way, and the decision also says conditional on the sustainability of the entity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ramaphosa instructed a task team to research how best to separate the transmission unit into an independent system operator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The team\u2019s deadline to submit a preliminary report was extended to the end of June, with a more detailed version to follow three months later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Additional delays and policy changes could further prolong the state\u2019s broader unbundling of Eskom into generation, distribution, and transmission units.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was a decision taken years ago amid rolling outages due to mismanagement and poor maintenance at the utility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moody\u2019s Ratings has warned that the separation process will be complex and could weaken the utility\u2019s business risk profile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese are no different points of concern than the ones that we had raised before, so the task team has got a responsibility to go to the president and say, this is how we\u2019ll do it,\u201d Marokane said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe litmus test is going to be on the sustainability component of the answer that will be placed on the table. The task team will lead us to an answer one way or another.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lobby group Business Leadership South Africa said it was imperative that an independent transmission system operator be established and that it serves as a neutral intermediary that provides access to the grid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis intermediary must own the grid\u2019s assets, not merely operate them on Eskom\u2019s behalf,\u201d Busisiwe Mavuso, the group\u2019s chief executive officer, said in her weekly column on Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOwnership matters because it removes any possibility that the entity running the network could favour itself or a related party over competitors.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Paul Burkhardt for Bloomberg<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eskom CEO Dan Marokane has raised concerns about President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plan to spin off its most profitable division.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":829872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[19927,1164,12501],"class_list":["post-864483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-dan-marokane","tag-eskom","tag-ramaphosa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864483","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=864483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864487,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864483\/revisions\/864487"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/829872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}