ESKOM lining its pockets with South Africa's savings

In the portion of Eskom's application that dealt with primary energy costs, Eskom had asked for R694m to pay for importing electricity from neighbouring countries. Nersa found that R540m of this amount had already been included elsewhere, and only R154m was approved.

SHOOT: I find this incredibly disgusting. If you want to sabotage the prospects of untold numbers of families, even the nationa's economy, you must play games with electricity the way ESKOM is. The staff there should be fired and replaced by people who simply provide an honest service.

clipped from www.fin24.com Cape Town - The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) caught Eskom out, as it were, in several instances where the utility unnecessarily exaggerated costs in its application for a 35% tariff hike. On Tuesday this emerged in a submission by Nersa to the parliamentary portfolio committee on energy. Thembani Bukula, who is responsible for electricity regulation at Nersa, showed the committee that Eskom had requested a 7%-odd increase in personnel costs as part of its operating expenses. Nersa considered an increase at the inflation rate of 5.6% to be more realistic, thus saving R739m of the total that Eskom had requested as permissible income. In another instance premium increases of up to 11% for insurance cover were included in the tariff application. Nersa compared this with prevailing international benchmarks and found a smaller increase to be adequate. The total saving on Eskom's application for operating expenses was R1.487bn for the three financial years to 2012/13.