South Africa's beleaguered state power utility firm Eskom said on Monday it planned to double its spending to R343-billion to expand its capacity.

The company has struggled to meet growing demand for electricity and earlier this year was forced to introduce power rationing, which has hurt the economy.

The spending would take place over the next five years to 2013, and more than doubles the previous five-year plan that had called for R150-billion in investments.

Much of the increase was to take into account increased costs for buying equipment, an Eskom official told AFP.

"The figure was revised upwards to reflect current realities in the international market," the official said.

"The prices of things we need to procure under the programme are skyrocketting and we need to factor these into our budgetary projections," he added.

Projects to generate more electricity account for 73 percent of the budget, Eskom said in a statement. The rest is to be spent on improving the transmission system to deliver power around the country.

The scheme would boost Eskom's capacity by nearly 38 percent to more than 59 000 megawatts, the statement said.

Hobbled by an aging instructure, Eskom has been struggling to meet electricity demand in South Africa.

Businesses lost hundreds of millions of dollars earlier this year on account of power cuts that forced Eskom to introduce power rationing.

An energy crisis, labelled by the government as a national emergency, caused mass blackouts that hit the key mining industry, taking a toll on the economy.

AFP