Investors are holding back on investing in energy-intensive
projects in South Africa as the country’s power crisis undermines business
continuity and hurts economic growth. 

“There are large investments, which are
energy-intensive, where the investors are cautious because they need to see that
we are able to get the investment requirements in place,” Minister of Trade,
Industry and Competition Ebrahim Patel said at an event on Thursday.

“So,
they’re anticipating that we need to be able over the next two to three years
to resolve the energy crisis.”

Patel was speaking ahead of the country’s fifth investment
conference due to take place in Johannesburg on 13 April. In 2018 President
Cyril Ramaphosa set a target to raise $100 billion of investments over five
years to support growth and create jobs in South Africa. 

South African companies are spending billions of rands to
keep businesses running as state-owned Eskom, plagued by
breakdowns at its coal-fired power stations, implements rotational blackouts —
locally known as load-shedding — for as long as 12 hours a day. The outages of
about 6 to 12 hours may cost the economy at least R204 million a day, according to the South African Reserve Bank.

Eskom has rationed power for 15 consecutive months as of
April, which includes a record 141 consecutive days from 31 October to 20 March,
according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“To the extent that we are able to address our energy
challenge rapidly, I think that’s going to inject more confidence in the
investor community and I have no doubt that we can achieve more than the
pledges we have now if we can increase power supply,” Patel said.