Eskom's Recovery A Model For Other State-Owned Enterprises: Ramokgopa

Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa on Monday said the lessons learned from Eskom's recovery can be used as a blueprint for other state-owned enterprises to create a plan for recovering from tough situations.

He admitted there will be adjustments required in the plan for each state-owned enterprise. However, he noted that there are common experiences that can be learned from Eskom's situation.

The minister highlighted that South Africa is currently enjoying its longest period without load shedding in the past five years. Eskom has gone over 270 days without implementing rolling power outages, with the last load shedding occurring in March this year.

"We are recording another milestone in that we are experiencing the longest stretch of uninterrupted power supply in five years. It is an important milestone," Ramokgopa said, SA News reported.

He added, "We are not celebrating the fact that we have not had load shedding for 272 days... We are simply marking the point that in terms of our quest to end load shedding, it's important that we are able to take account of these small milestones."

Ramokgopa said these small steps will contribute to a major improvement, ensuring enough capacity to support South Africa's economic growth.

Eskom has reduced unplanned outages by about 8% versus last year, improving the performance of its power stations.

The utility has also saved at least R16 billion in diesel costs compared to the previous year. The minister also recognized the continued efforts by Eskom employees to help turn the utility's situation around.

Ramokgopa explained that the country started from a low point, with 2024 seeing the highest levels of load shedding in terms of both duration and frequency. The improvements are expected to lead to a surplus for Eskom by the end of the financial year.

The minister said that the "Eskom lessons" can be used to "generate a template on how [we] are able to recover from a very difficult situation," adding that "It's a template you can take to any of the SOEs [State-owned Enterprises]... of course, adapt it to the nuances of that particular SOE."

He added, "But I think there are transversal experiences that can be drawn from the Eskom experience."