Burgan Bank rewards its premier customers

KUWAIT: Ensuring its customers are met with the latest lifestyle needs, Burgan Bank premier customers can now enjoy valuable deals at the prominent luxury resort situated in the heart of Kuwait - The Palms Beach Hotel & Spa.

Providing all with an enjoyable healthy and culinary journey, premier customers will receive a 10% discount on membership at the health club. Additionally, Burgan Bank premier customers can also avail 15 percent discount at The Rooftop Sky Lounge and Restaurant, famed for its international cuisine, and a 10 percent at Al-Muhallab restaurant the Kuwaiti seafood restaurant and Moroccan delicacies at Tagine Restaurant & Cafe, respectively.

S Africa aims to finalize Eskom split around 2022

PRETORIA: The South African government unveiled the broad outlines of a plan to overhaul struggling state power firm Eskom yesterday, saying it hoped to complete a legal separation of the utility into three entities around 2022.

President Cyril Ramaphosa said in a state of the nation address in February that the government planned to split Eskom into units for generation, transmission and distribution, but there has been little detail about the timeframe. Yesterday’s release of a government “special paper” on Eskom had been eagerly anticipated by investors and ratings agencies, which cite the financial and operational crisis at Eskom as one of the biggest risks to Africa’s most industrialized economy.

Eskom produces more than 90% of South Africa’s electricity but has been grappling with faults at its coal-fired power stations that have caused several rounds of power outages this year. It also has an unsustainable 440 billion rand ($30 billion) debt burden. Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan said yesterday that the government would prioritize setting up the transmission unit as a separate entity within an Eskom holding company.

At a later stage the government could create two or more Eskom generation subsidiaries that could compete against each other. The paper did not address Eskom’s debt in much detail, other than to say the government was looking at various mechanisms to give Eskom additional debt relief, on top of bailouts of more than 100 billion rand promised for the next two financial years.

Gordhan said the government would hopefully announce a new chief executive for Eskom next week, later than initially envisaged, after the previous CEO left his post in July. —Reuters