The government could have scored an extra R500m in taxes last year from Anglo American Platinum if it wasn't for electricity blackouts, says outgoing CEO Chris Griffith.Amplats announced record earnings of R30bn this week, which could have been R1.5bn more if the government had allowed it to produce electricity for its own needs, he says."Never mind what we've lost in the last couple of years, 89,000oz were lost in the final quarter. We lost R1.5bn from that."Government, the fiscus, the taxpayer lost R500m they could have got if we'd been able to refine those ounces which we'd already mined but could not refine because there was no electricity."He says Amplats specifically included this bit of information in its presentation "to contribute to making sure that people understand that it is not only some business people or somebody else who is losing, but the taxpayer"."Every day the government loses a third of all that we lose due to load-shedding. And that's just one company."Some fo...
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