ELECTRICITY
Electricity price hiked
Posted Fri, 17 Feb 2006
Consumers would have to face increases in tariffs in the short
run to pay less for electricity in future, the National Electricity
Regulator said on Thursday.
Announcing an average increase of 5.1 percent from April 1, NER
chairperson Collin Matjila said the current increases would allow
Eskom to expand its power generation capability through its capital
expansion programme.
"It means there would be a security of power supply, meaning
lesser outages, lesser power cuts and more stability."
Matjila said electricity consumers would also pay less because
they would only be charged for what is required to supply them with
power — and not as in the past where they also had to pay for the
need of future customers.
The NER also announced that tariffs would be increased by 5.37
percent in 2007 and 5.67 percent in 2008 on average.
"We put a whole lot of incentives for Eskom both in improving
the efficiency and penalising them in
the event that they don't.
Once they kick in we hope the benefit thereof would be passed on to
the consumer," said Matjila.
The adjustment was slightly less than the 6.6 percent increase
Eskom asked for in 2006 and the 6.1 increases in the following two
years.
"We don't anticipate any significant changes particularly in the
key programmes that we are running. If anything at all it would
most likely enhance that capital expansion programme because the
question of predictability and stability of the price would work to
the advantage to this programme," said Eskom spokesperson Fani Zulu
said.
"It sends the correct signal to the market in the sense that you
are going to see real price increases.
"In the coming weeks we will publish the impact of today's
announcement on the consumer or business user. There is still some
number crunching that needs to be done," Zulu said.
Sapa
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