Blom believes the backlog Eskom is trying to recover is due to corruption and mismanagement.
“The corruption is to a large extent related to the Gupta years.”
Energy analyst Chris Yelland believes looking at the past it is unlikely that Nersa will grant Eskom their wishes. Eskom asked for a 19.9% tariff hike in 2018/19‚ but in December Nersa granted only 5.23%.
“Eskom will be lucky if they get half of what they apply for‚” Yelland said.
“Nersa may decide a good percentage of that was costs that were under Eskom’s control and sales volumes that are under Eskom’s control. They may grant a portion of that R66-billion.”
Blom said Eskom overestimated their sales and assumed the economy would grow 5% annually.
“The under-sales and over forecasting‚ well‚ that’s just blatant Eskom mismanagement and maybe fraud.”