Reuters reported that South African power utility Eskom is in talks with global miner BHP Billiton to renegotiate long term aluminium contracts.

Mr Barbara Hogan enterprises minister of South Africa said that Eskom needed a new deal with BHP after the multi decade commodity linked contracts were largely blamed for the utility's record annual loss.

Mr Jacob Maroga CEO of Eskom told parliament that "Going forward we are engaging with them to start saying: We want to remove this linkage of commodity to the price so that they can now also pay standard tariffs. But it's going to be a negotiation because it's going to be a willing party’s process to make sure that we can have a mutually beneficial outcome."

BHP has said the commodity linked contracts it had agreed with Eskom were internationally competitive.

(Sourced from Reuters)