Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson says Eskom, and Eskom alone, would fund the proposed nuclear procurement. She told Parliament’s energy portfolio committee that "there is no basket of money in Treasury that will be used for this programme. "The balance sheet of Eskom will be used to leverage access to funding … the money will be found off the global markets. The fiscus would not fund the programme." She proposed that her department would simply act as "programme co-ordinator" for the procurement process. This raises an important question: Given the perilous state of Eskom’s finances, how does it intend to raise sufficient private capital to fund the procurement without tapping into the national revenue fund? The Treasury has been doling out vast sums of money to Eskom since 2008 to keep it from bankruptcy. The 2008 budget included a subordinated loan of R60bn for Eskom. At the time, then finance minister Trevor Manuel said the electricity power utility must in the future "fund...
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