President Ramaphosa urges Eskom to delay power price hikes

Eskom won approval from the national energy regulator on 19 January to raise electricity tariffs by an inflation-beating 18.65% and 12.74% for the next two years. The first increase is set to take effect in April.

“It will not be fair to impose the tariff on our people while there is load shedding,” he said, using a local term for power cuts.

Ramaphosa’s comments come after Eskom said the country could face two years of persistent blackouts as it overhauls its ageing power stations. He spoke in the Free State.

South Africa is suffering from an energy crisis, with Eskom implementing blackouts for more than 200 days last year and every day so far in 2023. The rolling outages are needed to protect the grid from collapse when the company’s ageing, mostly coal-fed plants can’t meet demand.

An additional 6,000MW of capacity is needed to stabilise the grid and a “great deal of progress” is being made in unlocking logjams to close the shortfall, Ramaphosa said.

In addition to procuring extra capacity, the government would ensure Eskom’s diesel-fed power stations at Gourikwa and Ankerlig had enough fuel to boost power output when its coal-fired plants couldn’t meet demand, he said. That would reduce the severity of outages.

Eskom produces almost all the country’s electricity, and blackouts curb output in Africa’s most industrialised economy. Intense outages imposed earlier this month have taken a toll on industry and agriculture, and there’s a 45% chance of the nation slipping into a recession this year, a Bloomberg survey of economists shows.