5 important things happening in South Africa today

 

• Minutes from a recent Eskom meeting show that the Gupta-owned Tegeta mining group is threatening to cut coal supply to the power utility, just as it was discovered that thousands of tons of coal have gone missing. Tegeta is demanding that Eskom pay more for its coal, meanwhile, Eskom is threatening legal action.

• National treasury is working on introducing strict new conditions for its guarantees to state-owned companies. Ratings agencies highlighted guarantees being dished out by government as one of the biggest risks on SA’s books. One of the restrictions will be a limit on how big the guarantee can be, and another is to force re-application rather than simply rolling over.

• Transport Minister Joe Maswanganyi says there is no way that over R9.2 billion worth of e-toll debt owed by motorists will be written off. He said that any decision to do so would have to be done at cabinet level, and there was no intention to do so. The e-toll default bill is increasing by R230 million every month.

• Naspers CEO Bob van Dijk says that the accusation leveled against Multichoice, around apparent kickbacks paid to the SABC to influence TV laws, is Multichoice’s problem, not Naspers’. He said Multichoice is one of 100 companies under the Naspers umbrella, and needs to deal with its own problems.

• South Africa’s rand steadied against the dollar on Tuesday, holding near a five-week high touched in the previous session after the country avoided a double downgrade of its local currency debt. On Thursday, the rand was trading at R13.66 to the dollar, R18.40 to the pound and R16.21 to the euro.