JOHANNESBURG - In an effort to turn around the woes that South Africa's state-owned power utility, Eskom faces, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that a special task team, will be deployed to help come up with solutions to the many problems that Eskom faces.
“The debt swap that Eskom has come up with is just going to descend us into further deeper debt as a country, so we have said we need to look at other options,” Ramaphosa said in an interview on 702 Talk Radio.
During the interview, Ramaphosa acknowledged that the power utility is in desperate need of help.
“I’ll be announcing a task team that is going to be looking at Eskom in terms of the current difficulties which will also strengthen what management is doing. We’re also going to look at Eskom’s business model,” Ramaphosa said in the interview.
Eskom has said it wants the government to take on R100bn of its debts, about a quarter of its total borrowings of R420bn.
“We will look at how to best position Eskom. We’re going to look at the funding model of Eskom going forward, and we’ll look at how we should structure Eskom," Ramaphosa further said.