There have been concerns that South Africa does not have the electricity reserves to match its economic growth rate, which has in part been spurred on by a slew of infrastructure development projects coming on stream.
Although stakeholders were working on electricity-generation plans to meet the higher demand, the country would be on stable ground only by 2011. If SA continued using electricity as it did at present, "we are going to have serious problems", Macozoma said.
Eskom said last month it would bump up its capital expenditure to generate additional capacity to R150 billion (aboutP129 billion) over the next five years, which could see the cost of generating and distributing electricity rise as much as 34 percent.
This spending is 35 percent up on the R97 billion (about P83.4 billion) projected on a five-year expenditure to upgrade SA's power supply infrastructure announced only last year.
SA's electricity is the cheapest in the world, at 12c/kWh. But the new capacity additions will cost considerably more, with a global benchmark putting the electricity generating cost for a new coal-fired plant at 25c/kWh - almost 30 percent more than the current selling price of power in SA of 18c/kWh.
Macozoma said although the cost of power would increase, it would remain competitive with that of other countries.
The meeting yesterday, which was attended by President Thabo Mbeki, was briefed on the state of electricity generation, transmission and consumption by Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin.
The country would be comfortable with a 15 percent electricity reserve margin, the meeting heard, but it was now 8-10 percent.
Trade and Industry Minister Mandisi Mpahlwa said various initiatives were being worked on in response to immediate electricity problems. These included demothballing power stations shut down when the country had enough electricity, looking at other energy supplies such as nuclear energy, sourcing electricity from Botswana, and constructing two open-cycle gas turbines in Atlantis and Mossel Bay, in the Western Cape.
Meanwhile, Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula announced that the police would release crime statistics on a more regular basis. He told the briefing that government, business persons and police were envisaging a process for police to keep communities up to date with crime trends in their areas every two months or on a quarterly basis.
The police currently release crime statistics annually, and there have been calls from all sectors of society for this to change.
"We need to be reporting regularly to our people on crime trends. In other words, we don't have to rely (only) on yearly statistics," Nqakula said.
A joint government-business team set up last year to address crime presented the meeting with a summary of concrete initiatives they had undertaken to improve anticrime efforts. - (BusinessDay)
