Section 34A of the Electricity Regulation Amendment Act requires that the independent transmission system operator (ITSO), as the licensed transmitter, control the network it operates, says business organisation Business Leadership South Africa (BLSA).
President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his February State of the Nation Address, confirmed that the new entity “will have ownership and control of transmission assets”, and the Presidency again reaffirmed this position in June, said BLSA CEO Busisiwe Mavuso in her weekly newsletter.
She said this in response to State-owned utility Eskom chairperson Mteto Nyati who reportedly said, first on social media and then in a radio interview, that Eskom's board of directors and “a Minister in that line” have concluded the assets should remain within the National Transmission Company South Africa and Eskom.
This is the same position Eskom had proposed in December, and which the President publicly overruled two months later, Mavuso pointed out.
“An operator that does not own the assets it manages, has no balance sheet of its own and, therefore, no capacity to raise the financing needed for the R440-billion transmission expansion South Africa urgently needs,” she said.
