BusinessLive reports that President Cyril Ramaphosa will soon announce an emergency government package that will cushion consumers and businesses against the worsening electricity crisis, which is expected to slash SA’s growth by as much as 2 percentage points in 2023.

ANC secretary-general Fikile Mbalula advised that the interventions were expected to be announced before the biannual planning meeting scheduled for the first week of February, but were unlikely to be equivalent to the size of the government’s R500bn Covid-19 relief package. “There have been calls from many groups and business that this [load-shedding] is a crisis and we are in an emergency... so an emergency package will be announced by government,” Mbalula confirmed on Friday on the sidelines of a two-day ANC national executive committee meeting. Mbalula reported that Ramaphosa told the party’s top brass about government’s plans during his opening political report. Ramaphosa is expected to expand on how government will help mitigate against power outages that have left large parts of the country without power for as much as 10 hours a day.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Thando Maeko at BusinessLive
• Read too, Plea of SMMEs to government: Subsidise us with generators amid load shedding, at EWN

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