“The economic damage of the ongoing load-shedding is severe,” Busa CEO Cas Coovadia said in a statement on Thursday, calling for an immediate intervention to deal with the crisis and to “at least manage load-shedding better”.
“Stage 6 load-shedding is a major blow to an economy already battling to achieve growth, because of some global headwinds, but primarily because government is not taking the tough decisions on structural reforms and priority interventions to increase investment and stimulate growth.
“The second quarter’s 0.7% decline in the economy was mostly caused by the continued blackouts, which have made this year the worst on record.”
The organisation called on the government to urgently enable Eskom, in the short-term, to purchase power from all available resources, to step up repairs to plants, fill vacancies on the Eskom board with people who have relevant expertise and hire people with technical skills where there are shortages at the utility.
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'We give our GDP growth away' due to load-shedding, says Business Unity SA
Image: 123RF/UFUK ZIVANA
SA continues to shed its gross domestic product (GDP) growth value due to an inability to provide a stable and reliable energy supply, says Business Unity SA (Busa) president Bonang Mohale.
“It’s important that we are having this conversation when most of us felt the full impact of load-shedding. The rolling blackouts happened for the first time 14 years ago and we haven’t managed to solve this problem,” he told the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration labour conference on Friday.
“Each time we get to stage 4, this economy experiences a devastating loss of up to R3bn every day. When it goes to stage 6 that number jumps up.
“In the past 10 years our GDP growth has been on average 2%. Half of that we give away because of our inability to provide a stable and reliable energy supply,” said Mohale.
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“The economic damage of the ongoing load-shedding is severe,” Busa CEO Cas Coovadia said in a statement on Thursday, calling for an immediate intervention to deal with the crisis and to “at least manage load-shedding better”.
“Stage 6 load-shedding is a major blow to an economy already battling to achieve growth, because of some global headwinds, but primarily because government is not taking the tough decisions on structural reforms and priority interventions to increase investment and stimulate growth.
“The second quarter’s 0.7% decline in the economy was mostly caused by the continued blackouts, which have made this year the worst on record.”
The organisation called on the government to urgently enable Eskom, in the short-term, to purchase power from all available resources, to step up repairs to plants, fill vacancies on the Eskom board with people who have relevant expertise and hire people with technical skills where there are shortages at the utility.
TimesLIVE
Support independent journalism by subscribing to the Sunday Times. Just R20 for the first month.
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