{"id":795467,"date":"2024-10-15T08:02:11","date_gmt":"2024-10-15T06:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=795467"},"modified":"2024-10-15T09:51:15","modified_gmt":"2024-10-15T07:51:15","slug":"eskom-lays-the-blame-for-wanting-a-massive-36-price-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/795467\/eskom-lays-the-blame-for-wanting-a-massive-36-price-hike\/","title":{"rendered":"Eskom lays the blame for wanting a massive 36% price hike"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa\u2019s state-owned power utility said it had to ask for 36% increase in prices because of the government\u2019s inability to rein in delinquent municipalities and errors made by the regulator in adjudicating earlier applications to boost tariffs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., which is receiving a 250 billion rand ($14 billion) bailout from the government, said the increase is needed to prevent the indebted company from returning to the authorities for further financial help. The hike would be for the 12 months to March 2026 and would be followed by increases of 11.8% and 9.1% for the following two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are striving to be more self-sufficient and not remain a burden on,\u201d government finances, Hasha Tlhotlhalemaje, general manager for regulation, told reporters at a briefing on Monday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The increase, which would add to a 600% jump in electricity prices since 2006, has attracted criticism from civil society, municipalities and government. Minister of Electricity and Energy Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said earlier this month it would undermine economic growth and deepen poverty and that the government may<\/a> intervene to keep prices lower. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The utility, which has about 400 billion rand of debt, has previously been a lightning rod for anger toward the government as it imposed regular blackouts due to inadequate maintenance and experienced a series of graft scandals.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The company has this year improved its power plant performance, with the last scheduled outage in March but is courting fresh controversy because of the planned tariff increase, which compares with a 4.4% inflation rate. While the increase would give Eskom annual revenue of 446 billion rand it is still below the 73% rise it would need to meet a return on assets equal to the weighted cost of capital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are not a bundle of household goods,\u201d said Tlhotlhalemaje, saying the comparison with inflation was inadequate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tlhotlhalemaje and Calib Cassim, Eskom\u2019s chief financial officer, also said the massive hike was needed as the National Energy Regulator of South Africa has consistently erred in adjudicating its requests and awarding increases that don\u2019t reflect its costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Read: The man who cut load shedding by 6 stages in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eskom has blamed electricity price hikes on government\u2019s inability to rein in delinquent municipalities and errors made by the regulator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":742431,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[1850,1164],"class_list":["post-795467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-bloomberg","tag-eskom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=795467"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":795523,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795467\/revisions\/795523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}