South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is the "last hope" for Africa's most advanced economy, but his government must turn incentive policies into laws to secure more Chinese investment, a senior Chinese diplomat told Reuters, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. China is South Africa's largest trading partner and has pledged more investment than any other country since Ramaphosa embarked on a drive last year to attract $100 billion of new investment to lift the economy out of a slump.

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which supplies about 95% of South Africa’s power and is reliant on government bailouts to remain solvent, is set to announce its second consecutive multi-billion rand annual loss on Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported. The big question is: How many billions? The state-owned utility forecast in January that its loss would widen to about 20 billion rand ($1.4 billion) in the year through March, from 2.3 billion rand the year before.

South Africa risks falling further into sub-investment territory after Fitch Ratings Ltd. cut the outlook on its assessment of the country’s debt to negative. Fitch reduced the outlook from stable while affirming the junk BB+ rating on nation’s foreign- and local-currency debt, it said in an emailed statement Friday, Bloomberg News reported. A negative outlook usually indicates that the next move could be a downgrade. The decision adds to the risk that the country could lose its last remaining investment-grade rating from Moody’s Investors Service.

A financial crisis confronting South Africa’s state power utility has become a national debt problem. Finance Minister Tito Mboweni Tuesday unveiled a second multi-billion dollar bailout for Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. within five months, aid that may force the cash-strapped government to increase borrowing and taxes, Bloomberg News reported. That could in turn trigger a credit-rating downgrade and massive outflow of funds, raise the cost of new debt and stymie efforts to revive the moribund economy.

The South African government’s decision to increase support for the embattled state power utility is wreaking havoc on the nation’s finances and may force it to increase borrowing and raise the budget deficit, Bloomberg News reported. Finance Minister Tito Mboweni told lawmakers in Cape Town on Tuesday that Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. will get 26 billion rand ($1.9 billion) this financial year and 33 billion in 2020-21 to help it remain solvent. The additional bailout comes just five months after he announced a three-year 69 billion-rand cash injection for the utility.

South Africa’s High Court on Tuesday has ordered the Zambian government to halt the sale of Vedanta Resources’s majority-owned Konkola Copper Mines (KCM) until a final decision is made through arbitration, Reuters reported. Vedanta has been locked in a dispute with the Zambian government since May when Lusaka appointed a liquidator to run KCM, which is 20% owned by Zambia’s state mining company ZCCM and the rest by Vedanta. Zambia accused KCM of breaching the terms of its licence.

Of all the executives, government officials and consultants being recruited to tackle the mammoth task of rescuing South Africa’s state power utility, the toughest task could fall to the person who has to take it apart, Bloomberg News reported.

Tongaat Hulett Ltd. is asking 10 lenders for a break from payments on as much as 11 billion rand ($793 million) of debt so it can recover from the impact of having to restate accounts, according to Chief Executive Officer Gavin Hudson, Bloomberg News reported. The embattled South African sugar maker is spending about 1 billion rand a year servicing the borrowings and is looking to negotiate a freeze by the end of July, Hudson said in an interview at Tongaat’s 19th century Durban headquarters, an old farmhouse surrounded by sugar-cane fields.

It’s quite understandable that Steinhoff International Holdings NV wants to create a favorable impression. The embattled retailer is in the final month of debt-restructuring talks, after all. In its results presentation last week, Steinhoff proclaimed in standout pink letters on the first page that it operates in “more than 12,000 stores with 40+ brands in 30+ countries.” Zoom in and the small print below reveals this includes discontinued operations, Bloomberg News reported. It comes after revelations of accounting irregularities that have wiped out more than 95% of its share price.

South Africa’s indebted power utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. was already searching for a chief executive officer and an executive to lead a turnaround of the company. It will now have to cast its net even wider to include a treasurer, Bloomberg News reported. Andre Pillay, who joined Eskom in 2011 and was made treasurer in 2016, will leave at the end of August. Chief Financial Officer Calib Cassim said Eskom requested Pillay remain at his post for the next two months, which sounds like he might have wanted to leave the struggling utility and its $32 billion debt sooner.