Politics and blackouts weigh on SA’s growth prospects
south Africa’s worsening power crisis has hobbled the economy, slashing growth last year to almost zero and quashing any prospect of a significant pick-up in 2020 given the time required to both fix the faults at Eskom’s aging coal-fired plants and to build new generation capacity.
Load-shedding was the worst on record for SA in 2019, costing the economy between R60bn and R120bn, and will mount over the next three years unless immediate action is taken to close the gap between supply and demand, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) warned in a presentation on 21 January.
Businesses, economists and rating agencies say the operational difficulties at Eskom are now the biggest threat to the economy, eclipsing even the importance of resolving the embattled utility’s financial difficulties, which are the
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