ZETDC managing director, Julian Chinembiri

GOVERNMENT has rejected a proposal by the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) to put farmers on stop order and introduce prepaid meters to recover close to $200 million owed by the agricultural sector, an executive has disclosed.
Julian Chinembiri, the managing director of ZETDC, a unit of integrated power group, ZESA Holdings, said it was critical for the ZETDC “to sustain the supply of electricity throughout the year without load shedding”.
This, he said, depended to a large extent on consumers paying for electricity supplies.
Chinembiri, who spoke at the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce congress held in the resort town of Victoria Falls last week, said: “We are not generating enough electricity locally to meet demand. To cover up for this gap, we are importing (electricity) but we are required to pay upfront by our foreign suppliers of electricity. We had a plan and suggested that lets have stop orders on farmers to get payment because the agriculture sector is reluctant to pay their bills which have gone up to about $180 million.”
“This amount accumulated from 2013 after the debt relief. Some farmers get their payments from the sale of their products twice or three times a year. But this suggestion was shot down, not by the farmers, but by the policy makers.”
ZETDC has experienced problems with debtors who have increased from about $900 million in 2014 to more than a $1 billion, resulting in reduced funding for recapitalisation and operations.
Chinembiri said electricity consumers were not keen to pay because they were waiting for “another debt relief in 2018”.
In 2013, government cancelled electricity and water bills for consumers.
Chinembiri said government should support the power utility since electricity was a key input in agriculture.
He said: “Let’s include electricity as a key input in agriculture. To guarantee power supply, this needs to be funded.”
ZESA is generating about 1 000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from its five power stations in Kariba, Hwange, Harare, Munyati and Bulawayo, which is not enough to cover a national demand of about 1 600 MW.
The power utility has also experienced frequent breakdowns at its power stations due to old plants.
To cover for the electricity shortage, ZESA has been relying on electricity imports from neighbouring countries.
The country has been importing about 300MW of electricity from South Africa’s power utility Eskom, and about 50MW from Hydro Cahora Bassa of Mozambique.
The power company is also procuring electricity from an independent power producer in Dema, which is owned by Sakunda Holdings.
But of late, ZESA has faced challenges mobilising adequate foreign currency to pay for power imports, resulting in Eskom and HCB threatening to cut electricity supplies to Zimbabwe.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe recently intervened to save the situation by promising to release foreign currency to clear Eskom arrears amounting to more than $40 million after Eskom threatened to cut supplies.
ZESA has plans to undertake several projects to boost electricity supply in the country and these are at different stages of implementation.
Expansion work is already underway at the Kariba South Hydroelectric Power Station, which will add 300MW of electricity to the existing 750MW at an estimated cost of US$533 million.
The project is now more than 80 percent complete and is being undertaken by Sino Hydro Corporation of China.
There are also plans to extend Hwange Thermal Power Station to add 600MW coal-fired units to the existing 920MW power station.
Sino Hydro Corporation also won the tender to undertake the Hwange project at an estimated cost of US$1,5 billion. [email protected]