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# South Africa is set to change how electricity is priced for the first time since 2008
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/electricity-pricing-policy-gazetted-ten-year-forecast/
- Published: 2026-08-20T02:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-20T02:29:59.000Z
- Description: The first rewrite of South Africa's electricity pricing policy since 2008 goes out for comment on Friday, and it would force itemised bills, a ten-year price forecast and a much bigger free allowance for poor households.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Policy, Business Bagel News, #big

Cabinet has approved a rewrite of the rules that decide what South Africans pay for electricity, the first since 2008, and the draft goes into the Government Gazette for public comment on Friday 21 August. Most of it is about tariff structure. One line in it is aimed squarely at anyone running a factory: the national energy regulator would have to publish a ten-year price forecast.

Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa set out the reasoning at a briefing in Pretoria on Tuesday. "We want everyone to have some degree of certainty on what will be the cost of electricity, not just today or tomorrow, not only in three years' time or five years' time. We want to create a 10-year horizon," he said. Heavy industry, he argued, cannot compute a return on a new investment off a price path that runs one or two years.

## What is pushing this

The comparison Ramokgopa used to frame the problem was basic arithmetic. Electricity tariffs have risen about 907% since 2007, he said, while inflation over the same period rose about 150%. "If we don't address the cost of electricity, we are unlikely to grow this economy because our industries will be uncompetitive," he said. The draft lands weeks after the regulator approved an 8.8% increase in July for customers Eskom supplies directly, and an average 9% for those buying through municipalities.

## What the draft would change

Eskom and municipalities would have to issue itemised bills showing how the amount owed was reached, including energy costs and the cost of converting coal into electricity. They would also be blocked from passing the cost of their own inefficiency on to customers. Ramokgopa said between one and 2.5 percentage points of the tariff people currently pay sits there because Eskom and municipalities cannot collect what they are owed. "You are not allowed to punish those who are paying on account of those who are not paying," he said.

The free basic electricity allowance for poor households would climb from 50 units a month to between 200 and 300, which the minister said can be funded inside the existing R21bn a year rather than out of new money. The draft also proposes a five-year move to tariffs that reflect what supply actually costs, credits for households that feed power back into the grid, and limits on the technical losses customers can be charged for. Customers would be allowed to buy from a supplier other than their current one, at published network charges.

Getting from draft to rule takes several more steps. The department has said it will consider the comments it receives, take it to the National Economic Development and Labour Council, Nedlac, for consultation, and put it back to Cabinet before it is gazetted for implementation. The comment window closes on 20 September.