Cyril Ramaphosa urges investment in SA despite energy crisis

Ramaphosa's plea comes as another bout of stage 6 load shedding had been put in place until further notice.

The president delivered the keynote address at the fifth South African Investment Conference in Sandton on Thursday.

Ramaphosa stated that the immediate focus is on improving the performance of the existing coal fired power stations.

“We have been implementing wide-ranging reforms in the electricity sector to enable private investment in electricity generation and accelerate the procurement of new generation capacity from solar, wind, gas and battery storage.

“One of these reforms regarding the removal of the licensing threshold for embedded generation, has facilitated considerable private investment in the electricity sector.

“This reform, together with measures to streamline regulatory processes, has enabled a surge of new projects, with the pipeline of committed projects now representing over 10,000 MW of new capacity.”

Ramaphosa reiterated that the power issues remain government's foremost priority. 

"The lack of reliability in electricity supply weakens business and consumer confidence, taints international perceptions about our country and affects investment sentiment and decisions," he said. 

“With a view to addressing the energy challenges we announced an Energy Action Plan in July last year. The Energy Action Plan presents a clear path to reduce the severity and frequency of load shedding in the short term and achieve energy security in the long term."

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