Cape Town goes private to boost electricity and water supply

Cape Town will call for tenders to implement several major projects that aim at cutting electricity costs and bolstering water security in South Africa’s second-biggest city and main tourist hub. The municipality will this month begin the process of engaging an electricity trading company to provide it with additional power, Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis said. Later in the year, it will ask private companies to bid on multibillion-rand desalination and water re-usage plants, he added. The steps come as Cape Town, South Africa’s only major metropolitan area to be ruled solely by the Democratic Alliance political party, tries to boost its attractiveness to businesses and cater for a rapidly expanding population. The city of about 5-million people has been the first to seek to break the monopoly held by power utility Eskom, and is pushing to take over commuter-rail services from a national state company.