Friday June 10, 2011

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Brad Dubbelman

Making headlines:

Maintenance and the refurbishment of ageing infrastructure was a common motivation put forward by municipalities applying for tariff increases above the Nersa guideline of 20.38% for 2011/12. Nersa held public hearings on municipal tariff applications in Pretoria on Thursday. City Power Johannesburg, which proposed an increase of 22%, said the average age of transmission infrastructure has reached 63% of its accepted useful life, and that it needed to build infrastructure to support major projects. Current City Power Johannesburg demand reached 3.6 GW in 2010, and with an already additional 200 000 consumers added to its electricity grid, it expected future demand would be in excess of 5.4 GW.

With just one day to go before nominations close for the next head of the IMF, the African Union (AU) said it would like to see a non-European in the position, preferably an African. The AU has not put forward a name for their preferred candidate to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn who stepped down last month as managing director of the IMF to fight sexual assault charges. South Africa's former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel has been seen as a possible candidate but he has not formally been nominated.

President Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet has finally approved South Africa’s long-incubated ten-commodity beneficiation strategy, which sets out to leverage long-term benefits from the country’s substantial mineral endowment. The Cabinet said in a media release that the beneficiation strategy provides a framework capable of translating the country's minerals into competitive industrial advantage. The beneficiation strategy, developed under the leaderhip of Mineral Resources Minister Susan Shabangu, centres on ten commodities and five value chains.

Also making headlines:

State-owned power utility Eskom has confirmed that R250-million has been set aside as part of a ‘standard offer’ to business consumers that are able to prove a reduction in their power consumption patterns.

Libya has accused rebels of butchery and cannibalism, and Nato forces of war crimes, while firmly denying a United Nations report which found that its own troops had carried out murders, torture and abductions.

And, South Africa is aiming to attract 50 000 skilled migrants annually, Department of Home Affairs director-general Mkuseli Apleni said.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today.