The department of public enterprises (DPE) issued a correction to a presentation it made in Parliament on Wednesday, removing any reference to power utility Eskom being insolvent.
Instead, the presentation, which originally stated that Eskom was “technically insolvent and will cease to exist at [its] current trajectory by April 2019” was corrected to state “Eskom is facing liquidity challenges”.
READ MORE: As it stands, Eskom will cease to exist by April — DPE
Spokesperson for public enterprises Adrian Lackay was not immediately available to explain the need for the correction or the cause of the error.
This is page 8 of the original presentation:
This is the corrected version of the same page:
The presentation, which was disseminated earlier in the day, was delivered to the portfolio committee on public enterprises and outlined the series of challenges that the company is facing, both financially and operationally.
Eskom began intensive load-shedding on Monday — after the unexpected outages of several of its generation units.
On the financial front it is labouring under R420-billion, and the cash Eskom is generating does not cover operating and debt-servicing costs. The DPE noted in the presentation that the risk of Eskom defaulting on its debt, threatened the economy.
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