( 3 minutes read)
· The South African currency, Rand, slumped to a record low
against the dollar in April, breaching 19 marks.
· A number of factors contributed to that including
ever-widening fiscal gap and ballooning government debt and of
course a spate of downgrades.
· In the meantime, Eskom said in a statement that the unit has
reached full generation capacity of 793 MW and is undergoing
optimization and performance testing.
The South African currency, Rand, slumped to a record low against the
dollar in April, breaching 19 mark. A number of factors contributed
to that including ever-widening fiscal gap and ballooning
government debt and of course a spate of downgrades.
There are reports that rand may bounce back to its self soon, going
by the expectations of traders . They feel that fluctuations will
start moderating, since the economy may rebound having reached the
rock bottom. It is evident that investors in the futures market are
becoming more bullish. Traders are now betting on rand gains against
the dollar, which is a turnaround from late March and early April,
when net shorts were at the highest level.
In the meantime, Eskom said in a statement that the unit has reached
full generation capacity of 793 MW and is undergoing optimization and
performance testing. The power utility announced in June 2019 that the
unit was ready for commercial operation. But Medupi power station has
been troubled by technical snags defects, leading to load shedding.
Since then, the unit had undergone a range of boiler plant
modifications. it has ramped up maintenance work to its
infrastructure, during the pendency of the lockdown.
Coal-fired Medupi, which has six generating units, has been hobbled
by delays and cost overruns, structural defects and claims of
corruption, adding pressure to Eskom’s already strained finances and
operations. In a bid to ease pressure on Eskom, the government has
unbundled the utility into three entities, namely generation,
transmission and distribution.
