The Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber participated in NERSA\u2019s hearing today on Eskom\u2019s 6 th multi-year price determination which reviews electricity increases for the 2025\/26 and 2027\/28 financial years.\u00a0The proposal is for electricity tariffs to increase in the 2025\/26 financial year by 43.55% for municipalities, and follows two decades of much higher than inflation related increases in electricity tariffs, says Chamber chief executive, Denise van Huyssteen.<\/p>\n
The requested increases are the result of a range of well documented issues\u00a0including delays in the commissioning\u00a0of new power stations.<\/p>\n
The Chamber is opposing this increase which is looking for around R300 billion income through the imposition of electricity tariffs at an above inflation rate for the next three years. Transferring these costs to businesses and consumers is simply unsustainable.<\/p>\n
One of South Africa\u2019s competitive advantages used to be having among the cheapest electricity rates in the world, and now we have a situation where by 2026, medium sized industry in municipalities will be subjected to less competitive tariffs versus other emerging markets.<\/p>\n
Municipal inefficiencies and particularly non-payment to Eskom, is a further burden, which is being shifted to the electricity users. The application includes unresolved municipal debt of R187 Billion, to be funded by Eskom through the tariffs. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Added to this the electricity distribution in many municipalities, including in this metro, is financially unsustainable. In fact the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality is budgeted to make a R1.3 billion loss in electricity, which previously was a profitable function.\u00a0Key issues which need to be addressed include illegal electricity connections and meter tampering.<\/p>\n
Equally worrying is the lack of investment in routine maintenance and upgrading of the electricity infrastructure. This poses a serious risk to the sustainability of businesses and especially those in the manufacturing sector.\u00a0 Within the industrial and commercial areas of the metro, we have tracked 66 major power dips this year and 114 unplanned power outages since January 2023.\u00a0These power outages pose massive risks to our economy among which include production volume targets not being met, loss of export orders, costly damage to equipment and machinery, the elimination of shifts and placement of workers on short time, retrenchments and even relocation of manufacturing plants to other countries or their permanent closure.<\/p>\n
One of the fundamental requirements of operating a business is having access to cost effective and reliable electricity power.\u00a0The Chamber regards this as a high priority and is willing to collaborate with the relevant stakeholders to find and implement sustainable solutions.\u00a0Specific initiatives which we are currently driving include Adopt A Sub-Station and the Electricity Technical Task Team which incorporates the participation of the Municipality, Eskom and Chamber members and is focused on addressing critical municipal electricity infrastructure issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber participated in NERSA\u2019s hearing today on Eskom\u2019s 6 th multi-year price determination which reviews electricity increases for the 2025\/26 and 2027\/28 financial years.\u00a0The proposal is for electricity tariffs to increase in the 2025\/26 financial year by 43.55% for municipalities, and follows two decades of much higher than inflation related […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[540],"tags":[551],"class_list":["post-6028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-business-news","tag-nmbbc","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6029,"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6028\/revisions\/6029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mype.co.za\/business\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}