ESKOM has secret deals with 138 big companies that pay
dirt-cheap prices for electricity - prices
that may be as low as 9c a kilowatt hour.
The average cut-price for these companies is believed to be around
17c/kwh.
These companies use about 40% of all
electricity generated in South Africa *1.
Households and small businesses will be paying about 80c/kwh once the full
cost of Eskom's price hikes are implemented.
These price deals are considered by Eskom to be
so secret that they were not even revealed to
the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) in the utility's recent
application for tariff increases.
Although Eskom has said that these companies will also be subjected to
tariff increases, it says it cannot disclose the percentage increases they
will get, nor the price they currently pay, citing "
commercial
confidentiality" as the reason.
It has emerged that neither the parliamentary committees on energy or on
public enterprises, nor the Department of Energy, are privy to the nature of
Eskom's secret price deals.
In a parliamentary committee meeting on energy yesterday, DA MP Elza van
Lingen asked Department of Energy director-general Neliswe Magu-bane what
percentage of electricity was sold to industry between 6c and 9c/kwh, and
whether these cut-price agreements would be revised.
Magubane said the cut-price electricity was a contractual arrangement
between Eskom and the companies concerned.
"We are not privy to this," Magubane said.
She said Eskom had told the department that they could not reveal the prices
because of "
commercial sensitivity".
These price deals were not even submitted in the tariff applications to
Nersa, she said.
Last week, parliamentarians in the portfolio committee on public enterprises
put the same question to Eskom officials. Brian Dames of Eskom replied that
there were 138 “large consumers” with special price agreements, but said the
agreements were confidential.
These companies would be subject to tariff increases, but that these were
also confidential, he said.
Dames said about 10 of these big customers, which had entered into price cut
deals with Eskom during the apartheid era, were not subject to tariff
escalations.
Eskom had begun discussions with these companies about this, he said.
ID MP Lance Greyling said yesterday these 138
big consumers were the reason South Africa was having to build more power
stations *2.
“If not for them, we would not have to build more power stations. It
is households and small businesses who have to pay for the price of the new
power stations through these tariff increases. We cannot have a real debate
about our energy future until we know who is paying what and using how
much.”
With acknowledgements to
Melanie Gosling and Cape Times.
*1 The magnitude of this
outrage is so horrendous that it makes the Arms Deal look like child's play,
which it is not.
*2 This is what I've been saying for years.
The biggest of these is Alusaf.
*3 The ANC want this outrage to continue so that there
is the rationale to build more power stations at a cost of R1 000 billion
(yes, one thousand billion) over the next 30 to 40 years. Of that they skim
10% to 205 off the top and can create 100 billionaires in the Malema mould.
This is national kleptocracy at its wildest.
Stop it now.