June 10, 2021.

For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Halima Frost.

Making headlines:

Ramaphosa increases licence-exemption cap on distributed projects to 100 MW

Western Cape enters third wave of the pandemic

And, South Africans can now track the country’s economic recovery

In a surprise move today, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the licence-exemption cap on self- or distributed-generation plants would be raised from 1 MW to 100 MW to help address the country's electricity crisis.

The increase would be facilitated by an amendment to Schedule 2 of the Electricity Regulation Act “within the next 60 days or sooner”.

It exceeds calls made by organised business and labour to increase the threshold to at least 50 MW, and allows the so-called embedded-generation plants to both wheel that electricity through the grid and sell it to nonrelated offtakers.

Western Cape Premier Alan Winde said today that the province is entering a third wave of Covid-19 infections.

The province has recorded an increase in cases of more than 30% week on week and the Head of the Western Cape health department, Keith Cloete, said cases have increased rapidly over the last 10 days.

There are 5 802 active cases in the province and more than 1 400 of those were reported in the last week.

South Africans can now track government’s progress in economic and employment growth with up-to-date information on the new Operation Vulindlela dashboard which was launched this week.

Operation Vulindlela was launched last year as a joint initiative of the Presidency and National Treasury to unlock key economic reforms and to fast-track the trajectory of South Africa’s policy reforms.

The new dashboard presents an overview of milestones in 19 focus areas identified by government as priority reforms, spread out across five sectors.

The dashboard can be accessed at www.stateofthenation.gov.za

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today

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