Johannesburg - Got the TV, but where is the licence?
Last week’s Census 2011 results reported that 74.5 percent of households across the country have a television.
But SABC licence fee income indicates that many don’t pay their licences.
The census counted 14 450 161 households in total in SA, so that’s about 10 765 370 homes with TVs.
The SABC doesn’t know how many licences were paid by private households.
Christelle Keevy, the SABC’s spokeswoman on licences, on Tuesday said the corporation received R1.01 billion in licence fees for 2011/12 in total for all licences, including domestic, business and dealer licences.
“As TV licence collections are reported as a total, the information regarding the split in revenue from the various categories would not be available at this stage,” said Keevy.
Current prices include R250 a year for a domestic licence per household, R70 for a concessionary domestic licence and R250 per set for a business licence.
At last year’s price of R225 per licence, that would mean only 4 488 889 licences were paid – less than half of the households which Stats SA says have a TV.
If all those households paid a standard domestic licence fee last year, that would have brought the SABC R2.4bn for household licences alone.
If half of the households paid the concessionary rate (R65 last year) and the rest the full rate, the SABC would have got R1.6bn.
The Star