Star 2021-11-10

Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za Eskom shifted the buck to misbehaving municipalities, regional system failures, technical mishaps and insufficient funding for the ongoing crippling loadshedding as it tentatively promised blackouts would be sorted by Saturday morning. In a state of the system address yesterday afternoon, Eskom said only the Ethekwini and Buffalo City Municipalities out of the about 160 in the country, had been compliant with loadshedding requirements, and it had written reprimand letters to errant municipalities that had not complied with schedules, which resulted in longer hours of loadshedding. Eskom's CEO Andre de Ruyter, Chief Operating Officer Jan Oberholzer, Monde Bala, the Chief Executive for Transmission as well as Segomoco Scheppers, Executive for Generation said the utility's challenges were laid at the door of defiant municipalities, systems failures in the…

Philippa Larkin philippa.larkin@inl.co.za PROFESSOR Raymond Parsons NWU Business School Economist: “We must not underestimate the extent to which the current Eskom load shedding now poses an increasing risk to South Africa’s (SA) economic recovery, to growth prospects and to job creation. The ongoing lack of energy security and predictability in SA is causing widespread disruption to business, especially small business. Business costs are rising as power ‘blackouts’ go to the next level in this country.” It now also puts a serious question mark over the key growth forecasts that must form part of the forthcoming Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement due this week. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana needs to have confidence that his best forecasts of future economic growth in SA will not be weakened by uncertain extensive load shedding. There…

Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za FRANCHISORS under British Petroleum (BP) have confirmed erratic supply chain bottlenecks that appear to have affected South Africa and the UK, which left them without fuel supplies of unleaded petrol and diesel for up to two months while the company prioritised its own forecourts leaving the dealers in the lurch. Dealers said this week they hoped a meeting scheduled for tomorrow might provide them with answers to the company’s selective supply decisions and the lack of clarity from BP. This had led to franchisors with renting forecourts and properties having to rely on the limited business from quick shops. Staff had had to be put on short notice because of drastic declines in revenue streams owing to non-supply from the petroleum giant, the retailer said. Franchisors have…

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za ROYAL Bafokeng Holdings (RBH) said yesterday that it had prioritised the socio-economic interests of the Bafokeng nation by rejecting Impala Platinum’s (Implats) proposed buyout bid of its platinum assets. RBH surprised the market yesterday when it scuppered Implats and accepted a R17.2 billion unsolicited cash and shares offer for 32.8 percent stake in Royal Bafokeng Platinum (RBPlat) at R180.50 per share. After the deal was announced, RBPlat’s share price slid 7 percent to a low of R111.96 per share, while Northam’s shares tumbled nearly 16 percent to R205.10. Later in the day the shares of RBH closed 2.18 percent lower at R117.89, while Northam shares slid 15.43 percent to close at R205.73 on the JSE yesterday. RBPlat, owned by the Royal…

Philippa Larkin philippa.larkin@inl.co.za AS THE SOUTH African Wind Energy Association (Sawea) welcomed last week’s R130 billion concessional climate finance “Green Deal” at COP26 from the US, UK, Germany, France and the EU, James Formby, the chief executive of RMB, said yesterday that the deal could translate into a R500bn boost to help South Africa’s Just Energy Transition to decarbonise its sources of energy. The finance is earmarked to help Eskom ultimately retire its coal power stations and assist it in building the renewable energy sector while preventing up to 1 to 1.5 gigatons of emissions over the next 20 years. South Africa has faced crippling load shedding this month as power utility Eskom battles to keep the lights on, hitting the economy. Formby said while this would not solve…

Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za NET 1 UEPS Technologies reported an $11.2 million (R168m) operating loss in the first quarter of its 2022 financial year, while the adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation loss came to $10.1m. Nevertheless, chief executive Chris Meyer said yesterday at the release of the results for three month to end-September 2021 that the company “continues to execute on plans for its transformation and the long- term commitment to unlock value for shareholders”. A priority was to return the financial services business to break-even, at least, as soon as possible, he said. Revenue fell 14 percent in rand primarily due to fewer prepaid airtime and hardware sales and lower transaction fee revenue. Operating losses reduced by 9 percent in rand due to the…