Eskom’s approved construction budgets for Medupi and Kusile leave out billions of rand of related costs, according to Chris Yelland, managing director of EE Business Intelligence, in an opinion column on Moneyweb headlined “sleight of hand”. Eskom has declined to say what its figures include.
What Eskom said
In a media statement on 10 September 2026, Eskom put Kusile’s approved construction budget at R160.5 billion, of which R155.5 billion has been spent, and Medupi’s at R145 billion, with R131.1 billion spent. The statement pushed back on Daily Investor and MyBroadband, which had cited much higher figures of R233.4 billion and R176 billion respectively.
What Yelland says is missing
Interest during construction. Eskom’s 2016 integrated report recorded approval of Medupi’s R145 billion business case as excluding capitalised borrowing costs of R43.7 billion, and Kusile’s R161.4 billion business case as likewise excluding them. Capitalised borrowing costs are the interest a company pays on loans while a project is still being built.
Retrofit and water. Eskom’s own 2026 integrated report now puts the Medupi flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) retrofit, which removes sulphur from emissions, at R41.7 billion. The column also points to the Mokolo-Crocodile Water Augmentation Project Phase 2A, which it lists as a requirement for that retrofit.
Grid connections. Eskom’s Transmission Development Plan lists more than R13 billion of transmission works linked to Medupi and R2.8 billion for the first phase of Kusile’s integration.
Failures and delays. Medupi began in May 2007 and its last unit entered commercial operation on 31 July 2021; Kusile began in August 2008 and its last unit followed on 29 September 2025. Along the way, a generator explosion took Medupi Unit 4 (about 700 MW) out of service from 8 August 2021 to 6 July 2025, and an October 2022 flue-duct failure at Kusile left Units 1, 2 and 3, about 2,100 MW, unavailable for much of the following year. Yelland counts lost revenue and the diesel used to replace the lost power among the costs that a construction budget figure does not capture.
Eskom’s response
EE Business Intelligence asked Eskom whether its figures include the owner’s development costs, capitalised interest, claims settlements, the FGD plant, rework costs, lost revenue and diesel costs. Eskom replied that its 10 September statement “constitutes Eskom’s response”. Yelland concludes that after almost two decades, South Africans are entitled to a complete accounting of the two stations.
The column is one analyst’s argument, not an audit, and the R233.4 billion and R176 billion estimates it criticises are also not Eskom’s. What is on the record is Eskom’s own reports: the budget figures, the borrowing costs excluded from the 2016 business cases, and the FGD retrofit cost. A related story: Eskom has written off almost R1 billion on abandoned worker flats near Kusile.
