South Africa: Nersa - Good Decision Good in Bad Process

press release

For years I have denounced the entire process of financing Eskom's build program through tariff increases; it is a fraud on us all. NERSA was established to determine tariff increases on the basis of changed operational costs and market conditions, not to finance capital cost and expansion. It is not equipped to do so and forge alternatives to the build program. It is bound to go with the flow of events created by Eskom. It is good that on this occasion it resisted Eskom's outrageous requests, but this is part of a charade in which in all likelihood Eskom already discounted in its request the possibility that Nersa would halve it.

Eskom will undoubtedly lament this decision merely to make it more credible. The reality is that tariff increases are indirect regressive taxes which are killing our economic growth and family savings alike, impoverishing the whole of our society. The build program should have been financed either with an international tender which would have attracted needed foreign investments or through the State budget so that its costs could be more equitably distributed and absorbed over a longer period.

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