DRDGOLD chief executive Niel Pretorius

DRDGOLD bemoans electricity prices

| Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:00 In an interview on SAfm @ 18:15 on 22 October 2009

[miningmx.com] -- THE proposed 45% annual electricity price increase over three years will damage DRDGOLD"s operations, said CEO Niel Pretorius.

"Our surface operations can absorb that, but that's going to turn, looking to marginal operations. So the sort of margins that we had hoped, the profits that we had hoped to achieve through those operations, are pretty much eroded," he said on the SAfm Market Update.

"It pushes our underground operations under water. There is just not another R70,000/kg that we can shave off costs going forward," he said.

"So I am hoping that they will revisit this policy, that they would seriously rethink this policy, and of course I am also hoping that the gold price will go up ever so slightly."

Pretorius said the September quarter had been a tough one, with the strong rand wiping out the gains made in the dollar gold price.

"That is one of the reasons why this slight increase we saw in revenues is particularly encouraging. We've really been stress-tested this quarter. A lot of things went wrong, and I think we saw where our strengths really are, and where our weaknesses are," he said.

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