South Africa would consider selling
stakes in publicly traded companies, including those held
indirectly through Industrial Development Corp., to bolster the
finances of power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.

The government said last week in its mid-term budget it
would provide Eskom with 20 billion rand ($1.8 billion) through
the sale of non-strategic assets. Many of those, including a
stake in Sasol Ltd. (SOL), the world’s biggest maker of motor fuel
from coal, are held via state-owned IDC. Finance Minister
Nhlanhla Nene said the form in which the shares were owned would
make no difference to the government’s ability to raise cash.

“If it’s held by government, it’s held by government,” he
said in an interview at a conference in London yesterday.
“There are areas where the government shouldn’t be invested.
It’s those areas that we are looking at.”

Eskom, which supplies 95 percent of South Africa’s power,
is struggling to meet demand in the continent’s second-biggest
economy as parts of its aging fleet of 27 plants fail, even as
they undergo maintenance, leading to blackouts. The utility has
to plug a 225 billion-rand cash flow shortfall for the five
years through March 2018.

Data on Sasol’s website shows IDC owns 8.2 percent. That’s
worth 29 billion rand, according to Bloomberg calculations.
Sasol’s shares traded 0.2 percent higher at 552 rand by 3:36
p.m. in Johannesburg. IDC owns almost 13 percent of Anglo
American Plc unit Kumba Iron Ore Ltd. (KIO) for 11 billion rand,
according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Its 7.9 percent stake
in ArcelorMittal South Africa Ltd. is valued at 1.2 billion
rand.

IDC spokesman Mandla Mpangase declined to comment in an e-mailed response to questions.

While unlisted entities such as freight group Transnet SOC
Ltd. and Eskom will remain state-owned, because they are vital
to the country’s plans to develop its infrastructure, shares in
mobile-phone company Vodacom Group Ltd. (VOD) “and those sorts of
things are a different ball game,” Rob Davies, the minister of
trade and industry, said in a separate interview at the same
conference.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Paul Wallace in London at
pwallace25@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Vernon Wessels at
vwessels@bloomberg.net;
Antony Sguazzin at
asguazzin@bloomberg.net
Leon Mangasarian, Emily Bowers