Cape Town - The country’s 257 municipalities spent more than R100billion in the second quarter (April to June), and it was the first time that quarterly municipal spending breached the mark.
Statistician-general Risenga Maluleke, on Thursday issued an update to municipal spending and revenue, where he said the R101.3bn spend was R15.3bn more than what was spent in the first quarter (January to March), “representing an increase of 18%”.
Maluleke said it was mostly driven by municipalities buying more electricity during the winter months, according to the latest quarterly financial statistics of municipalities report.
“To give an idea of how large R101.3bn is, imagine if this amount was equally distributed across the entire South African population of 58.8million people.”
He said each person would receive roughly R1720.
“This is how much it costs municipalities to provide services - such as water, electricity and sanitation - to millions of households across the country every three months.”
This comes after social activists were gearing up for a big fight with the City of Cape Town Council over its electricity tariffs.
Civic organisation Stop CoCT said it was considering taking legal action against the city council for its home user and surcharge rates. That followed after the city council met the National Energy Regulator of SA (Nersa) and the organisation, which disputed the city council’s electricity tariffs.
The electricity tariffs were approved by the city council as part of the 2019/20 budget after a public participation process which was held in April.
This month mayoral committee member for energy and climate change Phindile Maxiti said Nersa also approved the city council’s 2019/20 tariffs. Maxiti said in accordance with the Constitution and the Municipal Systems Act and the Municipal Finance Management Act, a municipality may raise a surcharge on municipal services.
“Such a surcharge would be used to fund other services and would not be used to recover the costs of providing electricity. The city’s fixed electricity charge is used to recover the costs of providing electricity.
“It is not for profit or extra income for other services and it is thus regulated by Nersa. The 2019/20 fixed charge of R163.32 (including VAT) was approved by Nersa.”
The city council’s director for electricity generation and distribution, Les Rencontré, said: “Nersa’s mandate does not extend to regulating a surcharge under the municipal legislation.”
Rencontré said it was highly likely that the complaints which were made to Nersa came in light of other cities attempting to introduce a fixed electricity charge as a surcharge to raise additional revenue.
“To reiterate, the city’s fixed charge is not a surcharge.
“It is for recovering the cost of providing electricity and no profit is made,” Rencontré said.
@SISONKE_MD