[imagesource:enca]

Our country has experienced unprecedented levels of load shedding this year, with the power utility struggling to meet electricity demand. As a result, the nation has been left in darkness for as many as 12 hours a day.

Eskom has warned that it would need to intensify these rolling blackouts over the winter months to protect the grid from complete collapse. Even President Cyril Ramaphosa outright admitted that load shedding was essential in preventing a total blackout in parliament not so long ago.

This is obviously causing a bit of a stir, as people, businesses and industry starts to wonder what will happen with the already unreliable power supply in the country becomes completely nill.

While some reckon a total system collapse is unlikely to occur, it is not impossible, according to The South African Reserve Bank’s Deputy Governor Kuben Naidoo via BusinessTech.

With this in mind, he said that the financial sector is doing all it can to try and prevent pure chaos and panic, quickly setting out to enhance the system’s resilience while it can.

That means that the central bank says it is working on a contingency plan to ensure the payments system remains in operation in the event that we are left completely electricity barren:

“If you had asked me a month ago, I would have probably said that in the event of a complete grid shutdown, there would be almost no transactions,” Naidoo said.

“Thanks to technology and some planning, we may be able to run some transactions, and we may be able to have some functionality in the system, even if it is for a short period.”

That’s a rather alarming few words, Mr Naidoo.

SARB and other financial markets regulators, including the operator of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), are working on a strategy to keep the markets moving:

“All of that work is ongoing, and we are working quite closely with the telecommunications sector, with diesel suppliers, the banks’ payments industry, and retailers to ensure that we can gradually raise the financial sector’s resilience,” he said in Johannesburg on Monday.

Alright, well, I am just going to hide some cash in my house – not in my couch, though, like someone we all know because that would be too obvious.

[source:businesstech]