The SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry is busy conducting a survey amongst its members on the potential impact that Eskom's proposed tariff hike will have on their businesses.
Acting CEO, Peggy Droskie, says Eskom is seeking a tariff adjustment over and above what the regulator has also approved in terms of the Multi-Year- Price-Determination 3 (MYPD3).
She said, if granted, this will be bring the electricity tariff increase to 25.3% in July.
Droskie told Algoa FM News that the last time they did a survey amongst members, they reported devastating effects on their businesses.
She said most of their members are small and medium businesses and electricity is a significant input cost.
"Previously when it was the MYPD2 we did a similar survey and we found that a significant number of our members would either have to retrench staff or that they would not employ any new staff. Some of them even said that increase at that time, which was much less than what is proposed now, would cause them to close their doors," she said.
Droskie said Sacci thought that with the increase that is being propsosed now and which has been put before Nersa (National Energy Regulator of South Africa) we need to indicate what the actual impact of that increase in that electricity tariff would be.
"We are waiting for those responses to come in so that we can analyse them and give a full report to Nersa when they hold their public participation meetings on what the economic impact of that increase would be," she said.
