Copper theft increased again in February, the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Sacci’s Copper Theft Barometer was R22.8 million in February — up four percent from January’s R21.9 million, Sacci said in a statement.<\/p>\n
It was R20.9 million in December.<\/p>\n
In 2011, the barometer averaged R17.8 million.<\/p>\n
The barometer — started in December 2010 — is an indicator of the estimated cost of replacing copper cable stolen from major users Transnet, Telkom<\/a>, and Eskom<\/a>.<\/p>\n The chamber expected copper theft levels to be higher this year than in 2011 due to increased international demand for copper.<\/p>\n “According to Xstrata Copper (Australia) global demand for copper will rise by 3.1 percent in 2012, boosted by China’s continued investment in housing and infrastructure that will drive up demand.<\/p>\n “This is significant since China’s demand constitutes 40 percent of global demand,” Sacci said.<\/p>\n However, the current trend of stronger law enforcement could cut out a vital conduit for organised copper-theft syndicates, Sacci said.<\/p>\n “Last year, there were 72,533 reported incidents of copper cable theft and 10,736 arrests were made.<\/p>\n “Sentences passed on guilty offenders have recently become harsher.”<\/p>\n Another positive measure was the implementation of the Second-Hand Goods Act, dealing with accreditation of second-hand goods dealers’ associations.<\/p>\n “These provisions regulate suspicious transactions as well as the possession, acquisition, and disposal of metal cable with a burnt cover such as copper.”<\/p>\n The Act would be implemented in full once outstanding regulations were promulgated, which was expected to be by the end of April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copper theft increased again in February, the SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) said on Wednesday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":26533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[36,181,8327,109,10248,10250],"class_list":["post-46680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-active","tag-eskom","tag-sacci","tag-telkom","tag-transnet","tag-xtrata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46682,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46680\/revisions\/46682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}