South Africa's national power utility reports first full-year profit in nearly a decade

Transcript

00:00For years, Eskom battled to keep South Africa's lights on.

00:09A government bailout, sweeping rescue plan, and new leadership has pulled the parastatel

00:14from the brink of collapse.

00:16Eskom, who generates most of the country's electricity from coal, has now delivered its

00:20first full-year profit in eight years, recording a 16 billion rand profit, an equivalent of

00:26nearly $1 million.

00:26We are now at 70% energy availability factor, and that's a good thing.

00:33We have a situation where we've got excess capacity right now.

00:40We need to be looking for new revenue sources for this capacity.

00:45That's a good place to be.

00:46But the issue now is the cost.

00:49The cost is high.

00:51We need to find a way of reducing this cost over a period of time.

00:56Momentum is building with Kusile Power Station finally brought into full operation.

01:00Together with Medupi, the two mega plants had 9,600 megawatts of baseload power, stabilizing

01:06the grid and easing pressure on the economy.

01:09The key is to maintain them.

01:11If you maintain them, they are going to serve us for a very, very long time.

01:16If you look at our Kube power stations, we have just done a revamp of that power station.

01:23It has given itself another 20 years of life, right?

01:28It's the same thing with the coal fleet that we have.

01:32The lights are back on, but the high cost of stable power is hitting businesses hard.

01:37The bigger businesses, the smelters, the businesses that use a lot of electricity,

01:44they're just not able to afford to stay in business, and so they keep scaling back in

01:49order to survive.

01:51But as they scale back, obviously they're losing jobs and they're not investing and expanding.

01:57So South Africa's industrial base is under substantial pressure.

02:02Consumers are also feeling the pinch.

02:04For a pensioner, it is very difficult to make ends meet now.

02:11We are battling to keep normal day-to-day running and cost of living.

02:19With that, everything else, of course, goes up as well.

02:22Your foods and your, well, everything, everything you need goes up.

02:28Load shedding may have eased, but South Africa isn't out of the woods just yet.

02:32Escom is chasing billions owed by municipalities, and future supply will hinge on investment

02:38in new and upgraded infrastructure.

02:40Oh, it is high amount of opportunity.

02:45Go!

02:55Sure!

02:57For a Straennel...

02:58Come!

03:00So I would like to take you straight up.

03:02I'm копHub...