Greater Tzaneen Municipality
The Greater Tzaneen Local Municipality (GTLM), like many other rural municipalities, is plagued by a combination of systemic and endemic challenges including low rates base, dilapidated infrastructure, shallow skills base, administrative challenges and many more.
The Greater Tzaneen Local Municipality (GTLM), like many other rural municipalities, is plagued by a combination of systemic and endemic challenges including low rates base, dilapidated infrastructure, shallow skills base, administrative challenges and many more. The DBSA took an integrated approach to municipal planning to help GTLM transition from an underperforming municipality to one with reasonable prospects of sustainability.
Background
GTLM was experiencing several challenges, including:
- Revenue losses: High electricity distribution losses that exceeded the National Energy Regulation of South Africa’s (NERSA’s) guidelines
- Ageing infrastructure: Much of the infrastructure is older than 50 years, and uneconomical to maintain and repair
- Billing and collection challenges: Incorrect metering and billing related to broader challenges in the network
Our holistic partnership with GTLM started in 2013, taking an integrated programmatic approach that incorporates both lending and non-lending activities to accelerate service delivery.
Electricity, roads and stormwater masterplans address the bulk capacity and mobility/transport challenges faced by municipalities, thereby providing confidence to lenders. The plans also inform the infrastructure plans for new infrastructure that require upgrades and maintenance.
Revenue enhancement support, including tariff structures, metering, and integrated billing systems, stabilised the revenue collection and financial stability of the municipality. Renewable energy projects also provide additional energy system capacity, with purpose-built control centres enabling municipalities to make real-time decisions on power issues.
Ultimately, it takes a well-coordinated and multidisciplinary diagnosis of each municipality to understand its development needs. The GTLM partnership showed how small contributions from DBSA resources can unlock more than 100 times the value in development results when implemented in an integrated fashion.
Electricity, roads and stormwater masterplans address the bulk capacity and mobility/transport challenges faced by municipalities, thereby providing confidence to lenders.
Revenue enhancement support, including tariff structures, metering, and integrated billing systems, stabilised the revenue collection and financial stability of the municipality.
Renewable energy projects also provide additional energy system capacity, with purpose-built control centres enabling municipalities to make real-time decisions on power issues.