Johannesburg - Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene is keeping a close watch on the cost of the government’s nuclear build programme, which President Jacob Zuma yesterday said was “at an advanced stage”.
Nene said the Treasury was assisting the Department of Energy, which is managing and facilitating the project, to ensure it reached a cost-effective and affordable financing model.
South Africa plans to build about nine nuclear power stations by 2030, with costs for the project estimated to reach R500 billion.
“Nuclear is in government’s energy mix, and therefore when we talk about its procurement, we must look at it in the context of the broader energy mix,” the minister added.
“Our role with regard to this programme is to support the Department of Energy to arrive at the most cost-effective and most appropriate procurement process.
“We are supporting the department in procurement requirements, but also in terms of affordability in terms of our budget,” Nene pointed out.
The government is looking at the nuclear programme as central to its plans to provide additional power to the grid in the long term, with Zuma admitting yesterday that the power crisis was the country’s “major obstacle”.
But, according to Zuma, it was not all gloom and doom for the South African economy despite mining houses threatening to cut thousands of jobs, the power crisis persisting and the economy looking unlikely to reach the 5 percent growth targeted by 2019.
He said the challenges facing the country should be understood in the context of a struggling global economy, and not in isolation.
The president conceded that the electricity crisis, which has seen the country facing continuous load shedding by Eskom, was the country’s biggest obstacle and costing the economy up to 1 percentage point in economic growth.
He said the economy was expected to grow by at least 3 percent in the next three years as challenges related to the state’s capacity to generate enough power were addressed.
“We expect the electricity constraint, which is our major obstacle to growth, to ease,” the president added.
THE STAR