FinMin Cites Broad Agreement to Sell Eskom Coal Plants, MTBPS Well Received By Analysts

LOCAL NEWS

• FinMin Godongwana says Govt minsters have reached a broad agreement to sell some of Eskom's coal-fired plants to help reduce its debt burden – which could be as much as R450bn vs Eskom debt of R402bn.
  • This comment came in an interview following the MTBPS. Godongwana sais this will need buy-in from the Eskom board, however, which may resist the sale due to the balance sheet impact of the sale – but we're not open to resistance.
  • Says the sale would put Eskom in a better place to conduct a shift to renewables
• The MTBPS has been broadly received as positive, despite issues like the basic income grant, e-tolls and NHI bill being kicked down the road to Feb.
  • The decision to feed excess revenues into servicing debt has been welcomed given the large debt service burden, but some were critical on the lack of clarity on measures to boost post-pandemic growth.
  • Pushback against implementing permanent grants with temporary revenues was also encouraging as Godongwana stuck with Mboweni's fiscal consolidation path
• Eskom CEO Says plans are in place to avoid extensive load-shedding in January when the Koeberg power station undergoes maintenance with two sequential outages planned.
  • This is to conduct the "complicated task" of preplacing two steam generators. Stage 2 load-shedding is expected to end today at 5am