We support new nuclear plants, says Brian Molefe
ESKOM supported South Africa’s plans to build more nuclear power stations because the benefits outweighed any cost concerns, the utility’s acting chief executive said on Friday.
Facing electricity supply shortages, Africa’s most developed economy plans to add 9 600 megawatts (MW) of nuclear power in the next decade and a half, estimated by analysts to cost as much as $100 billion (R1.38 trillion).
“My instinct, and looking at
“Our main focus is to get the borrowing in,” he said. “We will issue bonds in a more structured way. We will swop debt into a yield choice that works for us.”
Economist Azar Jammine said the fact that Eskom was able to raise money without having to rely on government bailouts could be a sign that the utility was taking a new Koeberg for example, is that it is likely that the future benefits will far outweigh the costs of building now,” acting Eskom chief executive Brian Molefe said in Parliament. Koeberg nuclear power plant is the continent’s sole nuclear power plant, managed by Eskom.
Energy Minister Tina JoematPettersson said last week that the nation would only go ahead with a nuclear deal if it proved affordable, deflecting criticism that the expansion would be funding direction.
Jammine said the money would help Eskom stabilise its finances and to focus on bringing more electricity to the grid.
“It is a step in the right direction for Eskom,” Jammine said. “But we just have to wait a bit to see if it is not just talk before we can confidently say that it (Eskom) has turned things around.” costly and done without proper public scrutiny.
Turning to maintenance, Eskom said it was managing maintenance at plants, helping the country avoid scheduled electricity cuts that had curbed economic growth.
“We are planning the maintenance shutdowns” to minimise disruptions, Molefe said on Friday.
“As of today, we have had 28 days of no blackouts.” – Reuters and Bloomberg
Molefe said Eskom was focused on raising finances and its reorganisation would happen in the near future. More than 95 percent of the funding raised had been signed and committed by both local and foreign financial institutions.
He said Eskom planned to meet all its debt obligations and was not looking for writedowns.
In June, Molefe told Nersa that Eskom would embark on an aggressive drive in order to fund some of its programmes.
He said at the time that the reason for Eskom’s downgrade by rating agencies was not because of the financial performance on its balance sheet, but was a result of a combination of corporate governance and maintenance backlogs that the utility was attending to.
Molefe said: “Are we able to raise additional borrowing in the market? Yes we are, we continue to participate in the domestic capital market. We issued a bond for $125bn (R1.7 trillion) in January of this year in the US and we intend to go back to the international capital markets during this year.” – Additional reporting by Bloomberg