The economic boom in South Africa following the 1994 democratisation led to increased welfare of the citizens and their purchasing power. This further resulted in increase in electricity consumption. The electricity supply did not increase proportionally to the increase in electricity consumption leading to the 2008 shortage of electricity which nearly damaged the power generating circuit. The literature review has shown that electricity supply and consumption have a positive impact on economic growth. It further showed that employment enhances economic growth. Conversely, it showed that power outages negatively affect economic growth. The research serves to investigate the relationship between electricity supply and economic growth in South Africa and to examine the impact of power outages on economic growth. It also seeks to find the appropriate structure for electricity supply industry that will lead to increase in economic growth. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds approach was used to find the relationship between economic growth, electricity supply, power outages and employment using quarterly data from 2000 to 2012. The ARDL technique was chosen over the conventional models such as Johansen technique for the research because it uses a single reduced form of equation to examine the long run relationship of the variables as opposed to the conventional Johansen test that employs a system of equations. The ARDL technique is also suitable to use to test co-integration when a small sample data is used and does not require the underlying variables to be integrated of similar order. The Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) Granger causality was also employed in the study to establish the causality between economic growth and electricity supply. It was chosen for its ability to develop longer term forecasting, when dealing with an unconstrained model. The results from the ARDL bounds test showed that there is a long run relationship between economic growth, electricity supply, power outages and employment. Based on the causality tests, the findings showed a unidirectional causality flowing from electricity supply to economic growth. This implies that electricity supply affect economic growth in South Africa. The results further showed no causality flowing from economic growth to electricity supply which indicates that when economic growth is booming fewer funds are used for improvement of the electricity generation. Lastly, the results showed that power outages negatively affect economic growth in the long run. To sum up, electricity supply is an important factor for economic growth in South Africa. It is therefore necessary that South Africa must put in place measures aimed at stimulating electricity supply. One of the measures aimed at increasing output of electricity is to unbundle the electricity sector. This process involves allowing entry of the Independent Power Producers (IPPs), Independent System Operator (ISO) and Regional Electricity Distributors (REDs). This will lead to increased supply of electricity and competitively lower prices of electricity. The study further recommends that renewable energy sources should be used to produce electricity instead of coal and nuclear fuels as they failed to produce enough electricity for the nation.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9024 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Khobai, Hlalefang |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MCom |
| Format | xii, 144 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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