By Paul Burkhardt.
Cabinet approved a bill on electricity regulation designed to clear the path for private generation projects and power trading.
Eskom has provided more than 90% of electricity used by the most industrialized nation on the continent for a century. The Electricity Regulation Amendment Bill outlines an entity to buy power as a step toward establishing a competitive market.
The Draft Electricity Amendment Bill has been approved for submission to parliament and will be prioritised, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters in Pretoria, the capital, on Thursday.
Eskom has become an unprofitable utility, despite its monopoly, and is moving ahead with a plan to separate the business into generation, transmission and distribution units.
The bill will strengthen the role of the National Energy Regulator of South Africa and allow measures to create a transmission system operator that includes the “provision of an electricity trading platform on a multi-market basis, and provide access to the transmission network on a non-discriminatory basis”, Ntshavheni said in a statement.
Meanwhile André de Ruyter, the former chief executive officer of state-owned power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., who said the organisation was riddled with corruption, has agreed to appear before the South African Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts and also present a written submission.
He will be asked about corruption, theft, maladministration, sabotage, lack of consequence management, cartels and other financial irregularities at Eskom, the committee said in an emailed statement. A date for the meeting hasn’t been set yet.
De Ruyter said in a television interview in February that Eskom was losing about R1 billion ($55 million) a month due to corruption and theft, with the help of people linked to the ruling African National Congress. A day later, Eskom announced that De Ruyter would leave the company with immediate effect.