South Africa warns of economic effects of blackouts

Pretoria, Feb 9 (Prensa-Latina) Directors of member companies of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa (CGCSA) asked the government to intervene urgently to stop a possible shortage of essential goods due to the continuous blackouts, it was reported in this capital on Thursday.

February 9, 2023
11:05

In an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa, the executives stated that the maintenance of units of the national power company, Eskom, through emergency generators is financially unsustainable.

Therefore, they recommended a rapid implementation of the government’s plans to balance the national power generation, which is already underway.

According to CGCSA Chief Executive Zinhle Tyikwe, the power outages have affected the country, also viewed from the perspective of the supply chain efficiency.

There is currently a national debate in South Africa about the suitability or not, to recur to the declaration of a State of Emergency (which is usually applied to natural disasters) as a way to speed up the recovery of the national power grid.

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