SOUTH Africa’s labour minister said he’ll oppose any move to privatize the beleaguered power utility Eskom Holdings, as it struggles to generate power, avoid outages and repay $23-billion of debt.
Privatizing the company would be detrimental to the poor, Employment and Labour Minister Thulas Nxesi said in an interview. While President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government has previously denied any plans to sell the company, there have been calls to divest from the asset. S&P Global Ratings said privatization may be the best option to resolve the power crisis in Africa’s most-industrialised nation.
“I am not a proponent of privatization of key state assets,” said Nxesi, who’s also a leader of the South African Communist Party. “If you privatize electricity, you can forget about the majority of people having access to electricity, it is going to be very expensive for them. That’s why government steps in when there is market failure.”
Eskom
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