Economic Implications of Conitnued load-shedding
I just spoke to a family member working in Johannesburg. I myself am not from there, but was very interested to hear his input on load-shedding from an purely financial point-of-view as he works for a big company there.
He here is the concerns around the water-cooler:
1.) Sanlam and other banking institutions are loosing R 5 billion Rand per day on load-shedding.
2.) Load-shedding happens for three hour periods at least twice a day in SA's economic heart (JHB city) at peak business and production hours, e.g. 9am - 12 pm and again 4pm to about 6pm (round about)
3.) Peak hour load-shedding is costing companies hundreds of millions of rands per day. When the power goes off all production-lines and business stands still.
4.) Load-shedding has now been estimated to continue for the next 5 years.
5.) After speaking to a friend which is an engineer working at Eskom he informs me that people know only half of the problem and that rolling black outs are expected
every day!
So lets do some calculations... for everyday for five years banking institutions and companies will be loosing an estimated R 10 to 20 billion Everyday!
Let's assume 10 Billion is lost daily in JHB collectively by big business and banking companies
365 days per year
X 5 yrs
X 10 Billion (minimum) =
18250 Billion in losses MINIMUM for Business in JHB city.
Predictions for the future based on talking to economists and other business people is the following:
(Consider for a second that we Eskom cannot build new power plants to take care of power needs)
1.) Talks of 2010 going to Germany has risen ( I am not lying... and not trying to talk fear into you here... just a fact)
2.)Fuel prices will be increased.
3.) All products across the board will experience a rise in price (drastically)
4.) Electricity prices will rise by a minimum of 14 % in the next two months.
5.)A large amount of foreign business interests have already shown that it is not willing to invest in SA as a result of load-shedding. Besides large affects to our tourism industry.
Now that I have said all of this... here is Our Problem as South Africans.
South Africans are unwilling to stand their ground, they come to forums like here, the write to the newspapers, the complain on radio in the morning BUT THEY DO NOTHING!
If this happened in England or any other country... Eskom will be drowning in Picketers... Thousands of people would line the streets in protest with signs and loud-speakers. Eskom would most certainly not be treated as well as we are currently treating them. Neither would the Government.
We are giving Eskom and the Government way to little pressure, because inevitably we will be and currently are the victims of their incompetence.
Finally I would like to say: Do not take my word for it... ask a friend on the inside
