Billionaire Patrice Motsepe said Eskom is letting the country down "very badly" as rising electricity costs and frequent blackouts erode businesses' profits.
Eskom suspended four senior executives, including CEO Tshediso Matona, last week as it announced an inquiry into the poor state of the business. The company raised prices by an average of 22% over the past six years to help pay for new plants and maintenance.
"There should be a quite serious intervention to make sure that Eskom is a competitive, cost-effective, reliable provider of electricity," Motsepe, whose African Rainbow Minerals will close a ferrochrome smelter in Mpumalanga next month, said yesterday at a presentation in Johannesburg. "These are things that can be fixed and should be fixed."
ARM is closing the Machadodorp operation due to low prices and a "persistent rise in input production costs", it said earlier this month.
The company and its partner, Assore, are building a smelter for the steelmaking ingredient in Malaysia.
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