South Africa now ranks 33rd out of this year’s top 500 global infrastructure owners, up two places from last year, a new list by global software developer Bentley System shows.
Local entities in the country that made it to the list include State-owned power utility Eskom, ranked at 142 with infrastructure assets worth $31.25bn; petrochemicals major Sasol, listed at 357 with infrastructure assets worth $15.35bn; and State-owned freight transport group Transnet at 376 with infrastructure assets worth $14.71bn.
According to the Senior VP for the global software developer, Bentley System’s Infrastructure, Ted Lamboo, the list represented asset ownership with several countries governments being ranked among the world’s top infrastructure owners.
Lamboo noted that Eskom was unique in the sense that it was a National utility which covered power generation and distribution for the whole Nation unlike other countries where electricity is separated between transmission and distribution.
Exposure of Eskom to other counties in the African continent contributed to its $31.25bn infrastructure asset portfolio.
The Bentley 500 global infrastructure owners list helped in the comparison across different types of infrastructure in different regions of the world through public and the private sector with financials reported in the past three years.
The combined value of the 500 entities listed in the 2015 Bentley Infrastructure 500 exceeded $16.2-trillion, which was close to the US’s 2014 gross domestic product (GDP) and more than the combined 2014 GDPs of China and Japan.
The US government topped with US-based global oil giant Exxon Mobil Corporation and Brazil-based oil giant Petrobras coming in as second and third respectively. The world’s biggest natural gas producer, Russian open joint stock company Gazprom dropped two places from second to fourth on this year’s list.
