Johannesburg – Eskom has suffered a loss of R20.5 billion, with the power utility also battling a massive debt it is trying to shed.
The company presented its financial results on Friday, where it posted a second loss in a row, after the 2019 financial year saw the entity incurring a loss.
In a statement, Eskom said this was a tough trading period and it had to keep its operations running. It said it had increased its maintenance programme.
The results by Eskom come after Finance Minister Tito Mboweni said in his Medium Term Budget Policy Statement that the power utility remained a fiscal risk.
The minister had identified several key state-owned entities as a financial risk to the economy.
President Cyril Ramaphosa also said two years ago that if the state entities did not strengthen their balance sheets, they would remain dependent on government to stay in business.
He said this was not workable and entities must beef up their capacity and strengthen their business.
Eskom has been split into three entities for generation, distribution and transmission.
It said it has pushed for the maintenance of its power stations. The country has in the past few months been hit by load shedding.
"Operationally, Eskom ramped up its reliability maintenance programme of its ageing fleet of coal-fired power stations in the period, which contributed to load shedding increasing to 46 days. Coal stockpiles were significantly improved to a normalised average of 50 days, from 36 days the previous year," said Eskom.
Chief executive Andre de Ruyter said they would contain coal costs now after the expensive short-term contracts came to an end.
“The urgent need to procure coal during the crisis late in 2018 also resulted in higher prices having to be paid to secure supply.
’’The bulk of these expensive short-term contracts have now come to an end, and we expect our coal cost increase for the current financial year to be contained well below inflation,” said De Ruyter.
Political Bureau