THE Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry NPC raised concerns about the future state of businesses in the city, province, and the country since the announcement of stage 4 load shedding.
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According to the chamber, the implementation of stage 4 load shedding will severely impact the economy across crucial industry sectors and it would result in a loss of productivity, that could lead to revenue losses as well as unplanned operational expenditure across industries and their value chains.
“Aside from the impact on citizens, the extended load shedding also has dire consequences for the economy. Energy analyst and expert, Chris Yelland previously calculated that the South African economy effectively loses out on R1b worth of productivity per stage of load shedding, per day – at stage 4, that would be R4b lost every day,” said the chamber’s CEO, Palesa Phili.
The chamber said small, medium, and micro-enterprises (SMMEs) are the economic lifeblood of the country and the sector provides employment to more than eight million South Africans. This spread across close to five million formal and informal SMMEs, contributing 40% turnover of all enterprises in the country.
“As a business collective, we need to see firm decisive leadership, that is concerned with the issues affecting the business community for us to combat South Africa’s energy crisis,” she said.
According to Phili, without power, business owners are rendered helpless and lose thousands of Rands with each instance of load shedding.
“We are encouraging our business community to implement innovative solutions that will help with their sustainability, as we are concerned with the state of Eskom’s efficiency,” she added.
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