36% electricity tariff hike won’t see the light of day: Ramokgopa

The Minister of Electricity and Energy, Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa says there will not be a 36% electricity tariff hike in South Africa.

Ramokgopa was speaking on the sidelines of the second day of the African National Congress (ANC) National Executive Committee (NEC) lekgotla being held in Boksburg, East of Johannesburg.

He says the country will need to relook the energy mix in order to bring the cost of producing electricity down.

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He says businesspeople at the World Economic Forum (WEF) decried the cost of electricity in the country.

“Electricity is expensive for an average person, very expensive for business. It makes their products uncompetitive. So, we are trying to design a way of ensuring that electricity, going into the future, is affordable. The exponential tariff increases that we are seeing cannot be sustained.

The application of 36% tariff increase won’t see the light of day. I am confident that we will not see those proportions of increases. I am confident that the work we have done, submissions made to NERSA, will suggest that the electricity increases will be significantly lower than that.”