Godongwana: SA needs to overhaul electricity supply industry

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana says the country’s economic recovery plan from the COVID-19 pandemic will require investments from both public and private sectors to drive an infrastructure-led recovery.

Godongwana was speaking at the National Investment Dialogue on Thursday 30 September.

INVEST IN ENERGY, WATER, HEALTH AND TRANSPORT

“The plan envisages new investments in energy; water and sanitation; roads and bridges; human settlements, health and education; digital infrastructure and public transport. We also need investment particularly domestic investment,” he said.

Godongwana said in order to attract private sector investment, the country would first need to create a conducive environment and structural reforms such as reducing our dependency on Eskom for electricity.

He said the first major issue is overhauling the electricity supply industry because, since 2008, government has spent most of its time trying to fix Eskom, without fixing electricity supply.

“It is my considered opinion that the electricity supply industry must be completely overhauled and we must reduce our dependency on Eskom,” said the Minister.

He said it was very clear that the challenges of poverty, unemployment and inequality will only be addressed through higher levels of inclusive economic growth.

Godogwana said last week government met with the Association for Savings and Investment South (ASISA) as a possible instrument to use to enable the private sector to invest in public infrastructure.

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CHOPPING AND CHNMAGING OF MINISTERS

“The second issue is what we are dealing with in so far as the issue of the spectrum. It is a matter which has been a problem because for more than 12 years, we have had 11 Ministers each with his or her own policy and undermining the need for auctioning spectrum and making cheap data available to the economy,” he said.

The third area is to follow global trends on greening the country’s economy such as greening the economy.

Fourth is the need to improve our logistics capacity. Fifth is the need to pay attention to the generally the cost of doing business in South Africa.