$83 Billion in South Africa Spending Fails to Keep Lights On
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South Africans suffering through their country’s longest run of power outages ever can draw little comfort from how much the government has spent on infrastructure in the past five years: One trillion rand ($83 billion).
That’s bought improved roads, airports, ports and rail lines. What it hasn’t produced: a reliable electricity supply. Rolling power blackouts have hit on average every third day this year. The National Treasury says “low and unreliable levels of electricity” are the biggest obstacle to faster growth. Data released Tuesday showed factory output grew 3.8 percent in March, the first expansion this year after the fewest power cuts in any month since October.