The new tariff vision has some positive news for the long-suffering honest households who have been paying their dues.
A new electricity pricing policy could ease pressure on honest consumers, but the legacy of Eskom’s debt and costly projects remains. Picture: iStock
Our senior ANC apparatchiks have a spectacular ability to ignore their own culpability in the messy social and economic quagmire into which our country is slowly sinking.
Hence, in laying out his thoughts yesterday on electricity pricing, Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa seemed bemused by the fact that South Africa’s power prices have increased by more than 900% in the past two decades… probably the highest rate in the world for a country not involved in armed conflict or experiencing hyperinflation.
That 900% is a staggering six times more than the 150% increase of ordinary costs in the same period.
While the minister clearly believes this is merely another one of those “challenges” thrown at the government by what we suppose is a capriciously nasty universe, the reality is that the reason our tariffs escalated from roughly 19 cents/kWh in 2007 to over R3.70/kWh is because of unquestioning National Energy Regulator of South Africa price approvals, corruption, debt and the costs of uncompleted megaprojects like Medupi and Kusile power stations.
However, to his credit, Ramokgopa gave notice that the new policy – which goes out for public input on Friday – will also aim to deal firmly with the mess which has seen both municipal and Eskom debt spiralling into hundreds of billions of rands and which, in turn, is choking the economy and its ability to create, and sustain, jobs.
The new tariff vision – rubber-stamped by Cabinet, apparently – also has some positive news for the long-suffering honest households who have been paying their dues.
No longer will municipalities be allowed to scalp those in more affluent areas in the name of subsidising those in poorer suburbs.
Nor will the overall Eskom tariff double-scalp those people by padding tariffs with a debt recovery percentage.
We hope this light at the end of the tunnel vision won’t be load shed.
