ROBERT LAING: Vanishing Bill in urgent need of resuscitation
LEGISLATION that desperately needs to be jolted back to life is the Independent System and Market Operator (ISMO) Bill.This bill started wending its way through the legislature about 18 years ago, but subsequently vanished without a trace according to a regulatory impact assessment submission to Parliament by the Free Market Foundation.The ISMO Bill was originally intended to implement promising government policies set out in the 1998 Energy White Paper. The original plan was for South Africa to follow the highly successful examples of the UK, US and New Zealand in opening the electricity market to competition.For South Africa to switch to a modern electricity market, the national grid must be separated from Eskom as I explained in a recent column.The ANC abandoned its 1998 electricity policy at a lekgotla in 2015, and a watered down version of the ISMO Bill is now being written, according to the Free Market Foundation’s submission which calls for the 2011 version of the ISMO Bill t...
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