Mboweni denies reports on Ramos’ Eskom appointment

Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has denied reports that Maria Ramos has been appointed to take charge of Eskom’s unbundling.

It was earlier reported on Sunday that Ramos had been appointed to lead the process to split Eskom into three separate entities – namely: generation, transmission and distribution.

In his State-of-the-Nation-Address in February this year, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the unbundling of Eskom into three units.

Mboweni says no one has been appointed so far but that Ramos is among those being considered. He says processes are under way but so far no appointments have been made.

Ramos recently retired from ABSA where she was Group CEO since 2009. Before then she was Group Chief Executive of Transnet.

The government announced earlier this year that the embattled power utility would be broken down in a bid to turn it around.

In his budget speech in February, the Finance minister said pouring money directly into Eskom in its current form is like pouring water into a sieve.  He announced that government was setting aside R23 billion a year over the next three years to financially support the power utility during its reconfiguration.

Mboweni says he has had to invoke Section 16 of the Public Finance Management Act and provide R5 billion liquidity to Eskom.

This comes after the failure by the China Development Bank to release on time an amount of R7bn from a $2.5bn facility reportedly due to its central bank exchange control requirements.

Eskom was at risk of not meeting its debt repayment obligations.