South Africa is considering spending more than 600 billion rand ($78 billion) on nuclear plants, another coal-fired plant and a hydropower project in the Democratic Republic of Congo to stave off power shortages in Africa's largest economy.
Proposals to spend 300 billion rand on nuclear plants with the capacity to generate 9,600 megawatts of energy by 2029 are in the final stages of consideration, the National Treasury said in the 2012 budget statement today.
The government may also build a 111 billion-rand coal-fired plant, in addition to the Medupi and Kusile plants under construction by state-owned utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd.
The Treasury has allocated 844.5 billion rand to energy, transport, housing, telecommunications and water projects in the three years through March 2015. It lists 43 infrastructure programmes worth 3.2 trillion rand that are in progress for implementation by 2020.