Johannesburg — AS SOME of the mining companies report, the terrible truth is becoming clear: the electricity outages hit sentiment more than they hit production. Both Lonmin yesterday, and AngloGold-Ashanti the day before, announced production figures higher than expectations. Profits of both companies jumped, and were outside the market's expectations, resulting in two consecutive large share price jumps.

Commodity supply is generally so constrained that something like the outages caused commodity prices to jump on expectations of lower production. However, now that the production figures are coming in, it seems likely the situation was not as bad it might have been. Like urban residents, somehow miners have found substitutes and have managed to keep the mines operating.

Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said the government would like to keep production as high as possible. Whether that can be achieved remains to be seen, and it's not yet time for celebrations.