ANC will 'deal with' Hitachi issue

Cape Town - The ANC will "in time" deal with any conflict of interest that may arise from involvement in Hitachi Power Africa's multi-billion rand deal with Eskom, Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said on Tuesday.

Gordhan made the remark while criticising opposition parties which had urged the World Bank to refuse Eskom a loan for its new generation programme unless the ruling party's investment arm Chancellor House sold its 25% in Hitachi Power Africa.

The holding has caused sustained criticism as Hitachi is part of the consortium that secured a R38.5bn contract to supply boilers for Eskom's new power plant at Medupi.

Gordhan himself last month called on the ruling party to "do the right thing" as Chancellor House's shareholder, but nothing has come of ANC promises to divest, made after the loan was approved.

"The World Bank loan: we might disagree about Hitachi and the role of the ANC and I've said publicly the ANC will do the right thing on this matter, in time," Gordhan said in reply to the debate on his budget vote speech on Tuesday.

"But that should not lead to the kind of discourse that we had from certain parties trying to shoot down the $3.75bn that we actually need that we can't get at this stage from higher tariffs, which we can't and don't want to get from other forms of borrowing and where we are trying to find a package solution to a problem we inherited."

Democratic Alliance leader Helen Zille lobbied the United States and Britain not to back the loan unless the ANC withdrew its stake in Hitachi Power Africa. Once the loan was awarded, she accused the World Bank of "facilitating pure corruption".

ANC treasurer Mathews Phosa appears to favour divestment, but secretary general Gwede Mantashe has publicly opposed it.

Eskom acknowledged last week that even with the unprecedented loan, it still faces a shortfall of R200bn to complete its build programme, and was hoping for further government support.

The finance minister called for consensus and cooperation between political parties on tackling corruption and South Africa's wide wealth gap.

"Let's work together to actually find the solutions.

"Around tenderpreneurs, procurement etc, we can stand up today and say we told you so. Nobody pointed this out. We as the ANC and as the new administration said these are the problems in government, local government, provincial government and national government. These are the problems that we actually have to confront as a society and as a government."

He said the problems were the result of apartheid depriving millions of people of economic opportunities country for a century.
"Today we are paying the price of that and we must actually acknowledge it."

 - Sapa