Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa July 2015 | Page 10

PROPERTY ALERTS

The
Bad

The
Good
Drop In The Price
Of Power

E

skom has reduced its tariff
hike from 12.7% to 9.5%. This
is good news for already cashstrappped consumers and property
owners.
The second proposed 14.24%
tariff price hike, which was due to be
implemented on July 1 this year, has
been postponed until next year. This
would have been more than double
the rate of inflation. It is also more
than the 8% initallly approved for
this year by the Energy Regulator of
South Africa (NERSA) through to
31 March 2016. Eskom has already
implemented a tariff increase of
12.7% in April this year.
Meanwhile, despite poor economic
performance caused by widespread
load shedding South Africa had
nevertheless already attracted good
foreign investment in the first
quarter of this year.
According to the South African
Reserve Bank’s quarterly notice,
incoming revenue (ie. Net capital
inflows) increased from R23, 3 billion
in Quarter 4 last year to R33, 1 billion
in Quarter 1 this year.
Inflation is also expected to rise
with economists predicting that
SARB will hike rates by a minimum
of 25 basis points this month.

8

JULY 2015 SA Real Estate Investor

Corruption In Human
Settlements Department

C

orruption is scandalous! It
is scandalous for officials to
subject citizens to corrupt
practices,” says Bicks Ndoni, Deputy
Executive Mayor and Councilor at
the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan
Municipality, at the opening of the
Developers Consultative Workshop.
He said that there was no point in
putting in place good interventions
when corruption was not rooted out
in the allocation of housing within
the Metro.
Ndoni went on to say that, “It
is a well-known fact that in [Port
Elizabeth] you can get an RDP house
quickly by paying a bribe…”
“It is simply scandolous that we
are subjecting our people, who have
trusted us and voted us into power, to
this sort of behaviour,” he adds.
The aim of the workshop was to
deal with issues affecting contractors
such as fast-tracking quality service
delivery, procurement and the quality
of houses, among other things.
“Let us distribute houses fairly and
justly, let us give them the quality
of houses that they deserve, let us
create intergrated communities with
schools, parks and play grounds, let us
not subject them to the humiliation
of having to pay bribes