Madam Deputy Speaker, at last members of this House are no longer in the dark with relation to the conditions of the loan given to Eskom because this Bill clearly documents the terms and conditions. So, we can say there is light at the end of the tunnel.
At the beginning of this year, unplanned power outages caused havoc in our country's major industrial sectors. Manufacturing and mining were particularly hard-hit by the outages and forced power rationing and supply shortages. South Africans have lived with uncertain power supply for a number of years, but the events of January 2008 underline the fact that our country was faced with an economic disaster if a timeous, corrective intervention was not forthcoming.
We know that Eskom has embarked on a massive infrastructure expansion drive and that they needed this kind of funding and injection from government. The projected cost for Eskom's expansion plans run into hundreds of billions of rands. They will perhaps even reach a trillion by 2025 if input costs continue to rise as they have done over the last two to three years.
We know that Eskom will be able to fund most of the costs as electricity tariffs will increase significantly in the future. But we want to sound a word of warning and caution to Eskom that they must keep their rates affordable because many thousands of people, particularly in rural areas, now use Eskom services. Therefore, they must ensure that their rates are affordable. We are in favour of the Bill as the IFP, which sets out the details of the loan over the next three years. We also welcome the provision that the loan is subordinate to Eskom's other debts and that repayment should take Eskom's balance sheet position into account.
The IFP is, however, concerned that Eskom might find it difficult to raise sufficient capital in the current credit environment. We need an assurance from the hon Minister that government will consider providing further financial assistance to Eskom if it is needed in the future. We will support the Bill. Thank you.