The Chamber of Mines opposes Eskom’s application to NERSA for increase to recover losses on its Regulatory Clearing Account (RCA)

If granted, the R66.6 billion increase which will be passed onto consumers will result in mine closures and will have a severely negative impact on other sectors that depend on the mining sector.

Eskom must rework its business plan to reduce its fixed and variable costs, while growing sales which will reduce the electricity tariff.

The Chamber recommends that NERSA:

• Does not pass the RCA onto customers but rather that the shareholder is tasked with dealing with the continuing inefficiencies at Eskom.
• Request the shareholder to consider the sale of some of its stake within Eskom as the shareholder cannot afford to bail out Eskom.
• Recommend to Eskom to reduce its spare capacity from 35% to an industry acceptable capacity of 15%.This can be achieved by mothballing/cold storage some of the older power stations.
• Recommend to Eskom to restructure their organisation to be in line with the sales volumes and revenue generated to avoid extreme tariff increases.