By Michael Hamlyn

The city of Cape Town is calling for the minister of provincial and local government to withdraw a set of regulations he has just published which would allow state owned property and public service infrastructure to pay rates at only a quarter of the rate applied to residential roperties.

"In the case of Cape Town this will mean a rates cut to the national and provincial government and to parastatals of 252 million rands per year," said councillor Ian Neilson, mayoral committee member for finance. "It would require a 7.9% increase in rates over CPIX to all other rate payers for the city to retain the same income."

Neilson said he did not know countrywide impact but it could be that local government could lose of the order of two billion to three billion rands in income from government that would have to be loaded onto residential and commercial ratepayers if service levels were to be retained.

"Municipalities with large government offices and facilities and those with state airports, harbours and Eskom power stations will especially suffer from the impact of these proposed regulations," he said. "It appears that there has been very little research behind the Minister's proposed regulations. He has certainly not published anything in this regard."

Neilson called for the withdrawal of the proposed regulations to enable adequate research to be carried out before their reconsideration.