The electricity tariff increases approved by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa on March 7 have put 90 000 gold and platinum jobs at risk. On April 1, State-owned power utility Eskom was allowed to increase its tariffs by an effective 13.8%. Although the ‘front-loaded’ nature of the tariff increases will hurt all mines and smelting operations, deep gold and platinum mines are particularly hard hit. Electricity makes up 25% of the cash production costs of gold mines and 17% of the cash production costs of platinum mines. Minerals Council South Africa chief economist Henk Langenhoven has calculated that total industry production costs will rise by 29% over the three-year period, which comes on top of ongoing high tariff increases in the last number of years.