Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille says industrial users of electricity in Atlantis will be exempt from price hikes in July.
|||Cape Town - In a bid to attract investors to Atlantis, industrial users of electricity will be exempt from price hikes when tariffs go up on 1 July.
Mayor Patricia de Lille on Thursday promised that these tariffs would be capped, regardless of the decision by the National Energy Regulator (Nersa) on the proposed tariff subsidy.
“This will reduce the overhead costs and encourage investment in this region.”
She said Atlantis, an area that was “very depressed”, should benefit from the city’s pilot incentive scheme.
She planned to “share the good news” with residents during a public meeting in Atlantis on Sunday.
The promised reprieve to industrial users comes despite a warning from the economic, environmental and spatial planning directorate that applying different tariffs for different groups could be considered “inequitable”.
It said if Nersa rejected the proposed reduced electricity tariff, and the city still offered it as as incentive, there could be legal sanction. Any tariff subsidy should be subject to Nersa approval, the directorate advised.
De Lille said the city would also waive its development facilitation fee in the Atlantis area to draw investors.
This fee is paid when a development will have an impact on council services such as roads, stormwater systems, water and sewerage.
But the proposed scheme does not come without its caveats.
The economic directorate said the scheme should not jeopardise the city’s financial sustainability in general. It should also be made clear that the scheme applies to only a limited area and for a specific reason..
Cape Argus