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JOHANNESBURG, July 7 (Reuters) - South Africa's state-runpower utility Eskom has secured a 20 billion rand ($1.4 billion)loan from the African Development Bank, the company battling tokeep itself financially afloat said on Thursday.
Eskom supplies virtually all of the power for Africa's mostindustrialised economy and has shown signs of turning a cornerover the past year after being forced to impose power cuts inthe first half of last year owing to a supply shortage.
Earlier this week, the utility said it had secured 57percent of the funding for its 2016/2017 financial year, whilesaying it had posted net profit of 4.6 billion rand in the yearto March from 0.2 billion rand in the previous year.
Eskom said in a statement on Thursday that the loan would beused to fund the general capital expansion programme, whichincludes new power plants, maintenance and refurbishment ofgeneration, transmission and distribution facilities.
The deal involves three loan facilities, including one whichwill see the AfDB act as an arranger for $965 million guaranteedsyndicated B-loan facility from the Bank of China, Bank ofTokyo-Mitsubishi, CaixaBank, Citibank, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase, KfW IPEX Bank, Siemens Bank,and Standard Chartered.
Eskom said the principal debt on this loan would be settledfive years after the signing date, while the other loans arepayable over 20 years.
($1 = 14.6400 rand) (Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia)