NamPower in the dark over Zesa deal
on May 24, 2013 at 8:36 pm
By Nyasha Francis Nyaungwa
WINDHOEK – Confusion surrounds the extension of the controversial power
purchase agreement between NamPower and Zimbabwean power utility, ZESA.
NamPower MD, Paulinus Shilamba announced this week that a 2007 power
purchase agreement signed between the two power utilities which was coming
to an end in October this year, has been extended by another year to the end
of 2014.
Shilamba’s announcement come days after the Zimbabwean Energy minister,
Elton Mangoma was quoted in a Zimbabwean weekly, the Independent saying the
agreement, which was initially scheduled to end last year, will be
terminated in October this year and will reduce that country’s power deficit
understood to be around 800MW.
Mangoma was quoted as saying: “The power purchase agreement is for 150MW so
you can see it’s a lot of power which when that contract terminates we will
be able to have another 100 to 150MW supplied to the country.
“What they (NamPower) have done is to ask us to sign a power purchase
agreement which is a lot more than the amount that they have given us. For
instance, we have got a contract that says we should be able to export power
which sometimes is in the region of US$4 to US$5 million a month to them.
“As you can see if we were just repaying with electricity we could have just
taken ten months or one year and finished it, but they instead actually pay
us for that electricity or a portion of it until the end of the power
purchase agreement which is in October.”
Briefing journalists on the electricity supply situation in the country on
Tuesday, the NamPower MD declined to give details of the new deal citing
confidentiality agreements between the two parties.
In 2007 NamPower entered into a power purchase agreement with Zimbabwean
power utility in which NamPower injected US$40 million into the
rehabilitation of the Hwange thermal power station in return for 150
megawatts of power for five years.
An outcry in both countries over the rationality of the agreement had
threatened the agreement and any future renewals.
In fact in 2010, the then Zimbabwean Energy Minister, Elias Mudzuri said
that Zimbabwe should stop exporting electricity to Namibia until the Hwange
Power Station was producing enough electricity. Namibia Economist