Business Report 1 November 2012.

Johannesburg – Massive electricity tariff hikes by Eskom with heavy top-ups by municipalities will force industries – particularly light industries – to shut up shop, with a potential contraction of gross domestic product (GDP) and thousands of job losses being among the consequences of “a perfect storm”.

This was the warning yesterday from the Department of Trade and Industry (dti)…

(Editor’s note: Well, we have to have the electricity, we have to pay for it, if we don’t raise the money from the electricity users, then the only other way is to get it from all the tax payers. I wonder what Mr Strachan’s solution is. Similarly with the high Municipal markups, if the Municipalities cant get the revenue they need from electricity consumers, they will have to get it from business and residential rates. The long term answer, of course, is to open up the electricity market to IPPs so we get some competition for Eskom and the Municipalities.)

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