Eskom will remove 4,000MW of power from the national grid until 5am on Monday as delays in returning three of its generating units to service constrain capacity.
Eskom will scale back the power cuts to 2,000MW until 4pm before increasing the blackouts back to 4,000MWuntil 5am on Tuesday, the state-owned power utility said.
“This pattern will be implemented daily until further notice,” the utility said.
The South African Reserve Bank estimates economic growth this year and over the next two would have been closer to 2% had it not been for frequent power cuts, said governor Lesetja Kganyago.
The l bank is forecasting growth of 0.4% this year, and expects it to average about 1% over the next two years.
Though load-sheddin “entered the South African lexicon 15 years ago, it has intensified over the past two years, placing a binding constraint on growth,” Kganyago said on Friday at a meeting of the bank’s shareholders.
Load-shedding is also badly affecting the country’s more than 300-year-old wine industry. It is affecting all stages of production from irrigation to bottling.
When power cuts interrupt watering the vines can experience “partial stresses” which can reduce the size and number of fruit, according to Wanda Augustyn, communications manager for Vinpro, an industry body.
The 2023 harvest is estimated at about 1.2-million tonnes, 14.2% smaller than last year, according to the South African Wine Industry and Information Systems, an industry association.
The drop is attributed to a combination of factors, including cold, wet weather and the uprooting of vineyards due to disease. A lack of electricity in intensively irrigated areas negatively affected crop sizes.
South Africa has started a fund to help the government fast-track electricity generation projects needed to end the crippling energy crisis.
The Energy One Stop Shop and Resilience Fund will aim to streamline regulatory processes required for private investment in electricity production and help speed up the approval of projects, trade, industry and competition minister Ebrahim Patel said at a virtual launch on Thursday.
More than 115 companies operating in South Africa representing more than 1.2-million employees signed a pledge to help government do its job, highlighting the collapse of the state’s ability to provide basic services ranging from electricity to policing.
The firms, which include Anglo American and Glencore, undertook to provide “funding, skills and expertise” to tackle “low economic growth, collapsing infrastructure, rampant crime and corruption”, according to a joint statement on Thursday.
Fixed investment in the country dropped by almost a third in the first half because of persistent power outages, rising interest rates and cost pressures that have weighed on profitability and eroded business confidence.
The value of new projects fell to an annualised R173.1bn in the six months through June, compared with R248.5bn a year earlier, according to a report published by Nedbank Group, one of the country’s largest lenders, last Tuesday. That’s the lowest since 2019.
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