Municipalities hit white ratepayers hard with hiked tariffs
Dec 12 2010 by Antoinette Slabbert
Pretoria - Municipalities are busy quietly but dramatically hiking levies and tariffs for services other than the usual water, electricity and property rates.
Economist.co.za economist Mike Schüssler this week reported that municipalities’ income from consumers and businesses in the third quarter of this year was 72.2% more than in the same period two years ago.
Schüssler based his assertion on figures published by National Treasury, summarise the figures reported each month by the municipalities.
“Own income”, which excludes allocations from central government, increased from R30bn to R51.7bn in this period.
The biggest increase, 124.5%, was in the “other” category.
Schüssler said that he "suspected that municipalities were imposing levies on items that had not previously been paid for in order to extract more money from the consumer."
He said that over two years “other” costs had risen 10 times nominal GDP growth, which was alarming.
South Africans could not afford these costs and, moreover, received precious little value for their money........
http://www.fin24.com/Economy/Municipalities-hike-tariffs-on-the-sly-20101212
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