The South African government has opted for an evolutionary approach to the restructuring of Eskom, the details of which are provided in a ‘special paper’ released by Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan on Tuesday. Titled a ‘Roadmap for Eskom in a Reformed Electricity Supply Industry’, the paper outlines a multiyear process for the unbundling of the vertically integrated State-owned utility into separate generation, transmission and distribution entities. The paper highlights the unsustainability of Eskom’s debt, which stands at more than R450-billion currently, and reiterates the position that the utility remains the single-largest risk to the South African economy.
