Cape Town to raise water tariffs due to reduced revenue
While the city is selling less water, the infrastructure costs remain the same, making water tariffs, on a sliding usage scale, inevitable
Reduced revenue and the increased cost of water supply infrastructure mean that the City of Cape Town has to raise water tariffs. This was the reasoning provided at a discussion hosted by the City of Cape Town on the proposed new water tariffs this week. "If we used to sell 1‚000-million litres [of water] a day but now we can only sell 500-million litres a day‚ we need to still cover the costs of the whole network‚" said Gisela Kaiser‚ executive director of informal settlements‚ water and waste. "So our costs are not a lot less than for 1‚000-million litres‚ but our revenue is now halved‚ so we actually have to double our unit cost. And that’s really what we mean by having to increase tariffs, just because our sales are down." Water usage in Cape Town has dropped significantly over the past year‚ but Kaiser said this also meant that the city’s revenue declined. According to the latest Water Outlook 2018 Report‚ the average water demand dropped by about 45% from February 2017 to Febr...
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