Eskom’s Kriel power plant will continue to operate under its existing emissions licence until Eskom and government bodies reach an agreement that is expected this month. While Eskom said in December that it expected the issue of its new emissions standards to be resolved by the end of January, spokesman Andrew Etzinger said this was only an estimate. “The end of January was never a deadline. But we’ve made good progress in January and we expect that the matter will be resolved by the end of February,” he told Business Report on Friday. Eskom, the Mpumalanga government and various national departments began talks last year to avoid a situation where the utility would need to shut down some of Kriel’s units to comply with the new standards. Eskom said it might have to cut Kriel’s capacity by 2 400 megawatts to comply with the new standards if it was not granted a variation order to the emissions licence. Etzinger said the talks were not about exempting Eskom from the emission requirements or changing the standards but about that variation order. – Londiwe Buthelezi
SA posts December trade surplus
South Africa posted a trade surplus for the second month in a row in December as factories shut for the holidays, reducing demand for imports. The trade surplus swelled to R2.8 billion compared with a revised R695 million in November, the SA Revenue Service (Sars) said on Friday. Sars on November 14 revised its trade data to include trade with Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, which helped to halve the trade deficit for the first nine months of last year. – Bloomberg