The financial year ending March 2024 was an inflection point for Eskom and illustrates the trajectory of the state utility in the coming years.
This is according to the Electricity and Energy Minister, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa, who lauded Eskom's latest financial results.
He made these comments even though the utility lost R55 billion in the 2024 financial year.
Eskom’s multi-billion rand loss after tax occurred mainly due to the derecognition of a deferred tax asset of R36.6 billion triggered by the separation of the National Transmission Company South Africa on March 31, 2024.
The utility also said it lost R22 billion due to load shedding and R23 billion due to electricity theft.
The curve is changing
Ramokgopa said that the 2024 financial year is a point of inflection and the utility is on a curve of change.
“There’s no turning back and we’ll only improve from here and that’s the assurance we are giving to the country,” he explained.
The minister said that Eskom recorded a net loss before tax of R25.5 billion, an improvement from the previous financial year’s R34.6 billion.
The separation of the National Transmission Company has triggered a once-off accounting adjustment, leading to a loss after tax of R55 billion, he explained.
The good news
Ramokgopa noted that South Africa only experienced 261 days of no load shedding in 2024 and has improved its plant performance resulting in billions of rands being saved on diesel costs.
“We are taking responsibility for what happened, and the numbers don’t look good. We carry that responsibility and take the good with the bad. The projection outlook going forward is very positive, but we are responsible for that record,” he said.
“We are able to illustrate to the country that we are moving in the right direction. We can simply improve from here,” the minister emphasised.
Eskom Group Chief Executive, Dan Marokane, said that 2024 was a painful year for the utility but it was a year of building and he firmly believes that the company is on a path towards recovery.
“This was the year in which the Generation Recovery Plan was instituted. A lot of effort went into investing in both maintenance expenditure and human resources that were critically required to enable execution,” he added.
“It’s also a year where we started seeing the government debt relief programme kicking into action. The certainty that arises from that gave us the ability to plan better and to do the deep maintenance that was required in that financial year,” Marokane said.
Lastly, he said that Eskom owns the results and that it was part of the utility’s “story”. “They are part of our journey, and we hope that in due course as we add more points, you will begin to see the recovery path unfolding,” he concluded.
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