Electricity utility Eskom is still a long way from resolving how it plans to deal with the financial hole that has emerged as a result of the regulator’s decision not to grant the 16%-a-year price increases it had sought for the five-year period to 2018. Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s believes Eskom will require additional funding of about R50-billion to close the gap, assuming that it is also able to claw back some of the ‘disallowances’ through regulatory mechanisms and that it meets its cost-cutting targets. Failure on either front would translate into an even larger hole that will inevitably have to be closed by either the consumer or the taxpayer.