Businesses in Durban say load shedding increases their operating costs

As South Africans are eagerly awaiting President Cyril Ramaphosa’s state of the nation address on Thursday night, businesses in Durban say load shedding has added cost to running their business.

The country has been battling hours of load shedding daily. Some businesses had to buy generators to keep afloat.

Stephen Marshall of Gold Circle in Durban says their business requires electricity to operate, hence they were forced to get other sources of power.

“As far as the extra costs you mentioned load shedding, it is something that we have to deal with as part of our daily lives now, here at Hollywoodbets Greyville and our racecourse in Pietermaritzburg Hollywoodbets Scottsville, we have to run the show because all of the revenues that we generate are reliant on us putting on the show and to put on the show, we got no choice but to use electricity so even when we load shedding we got massive generators in place that obviously comes with added costs to do business because you have to fill those generators,” says Marshall.

Horse racing industry struggling as a result of load shedding: Stephen Marshall

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Meanwhile, Marshall says they might be forced to implement cost-cutting measures which could result in job losses.

“For us the added costs of doing business with the generators and fuelling them, the decrease of revenues, the overall effect it has on the total and other aspects of our business, it is not a good model to have where your costs are rising and your revenues are decreasing. So, we are looking at the moment, forecasting quite a substantial loss for this trading year. And that will have some severe consequences if we cannot make up that money that we are losing in revenues, in increased cost – then we will have to look at cost-cutting measures.”

CEOs write a letter to President ahead of the SONA

The CEOs of companies, who are members of the Consumer Goods Council of South Africa, have written to President Cyril Ramaphosa ahead of the State of the Nation Address.

They’re worried about the increasing cost of doing business in the country, due to rolling blackouts and deteriorating infrastructure. This could lead to consumers paying even more for essential services.

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