Chairperson’s OVERVIEW I hereby present the Minister of Energy with the CEF Group Annual report for the year ended 31 March 2010.
During the 2009/10 financial year Government and companies globally experienced one of the worst economic recessions. This had an impact on market confidence, stricter credit criteria, reduced spending, decline in investments and property prices and also contributed to significant job losses. The economic experts predicted that South Africa would weather the storm, but the domestic crisis largely contributed by the significant hike in electricity prices and the strengthening of the Rand in the last quarter of the financial year to R7.34 saw South Africa in the eye of the storm. The global economic downturn had a significant impact on the CEF Group and the dwindling gas reserves at PetroSA further contributed to the loss of R82 million (2009: R2 314 million profit). The CEF Group has a number of initiatives for the 2010/11 financial year and beyond which will see the Group recovering from the poor performance. The 12 direct active subsidiaries have continued to strive to achieve their goals in one of the most challenging years that the Group has experienced.
Acknowledgements I would like to extend my appreciation to the Minister of Energy, directors of CEF and the subsidiaries for their invaluable input during the financial year. I would also like to thank all CEF Group staff for their hard work in what has proved to be a challenging year.
B Mabuza Chairperson 29 July 2010
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