Business Reporter—
THE Ministry of Energy and Power Development has refuted reports over alleged approval of an electricity tariff hike by the power utility, Zesa. In a statement yesterday, the ministry said a report last week, which indicated that the ministry had given the nod to a tariff increase, did not reflect the correct government position.
“The correct position of the Ministry of Energy and Power Development is that no tariff increase has been approved by the government,” said the ministry. It said the correct position was that Zesa applied to the regulator, the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (Zera) for a tariff review in November 2015.
The regulator reviewed the application in December 2015 and later conducted consultative meetings with interested parties between January and February this year as per requirement of the Electricity Act. A majority of consumers — industry, farmers and domestic — condemned the proposed tariff hike saying this was going to increase the burden on them.
The ministry said Zera was “still consolidating” stakeholder inputs before finalising the tariff approval. It said: “It should be noted that the regulator Zera is the only institute mandated to announce any tariff adjustments. The regulator has not done so, and therefore, there is no change on the current tariff”.
The government has since advised those concerned to contact Zera for clarification. Zimbabwe faces an acute power supply gap given suppressed domestic generation at less than 1,000MW compared to above 2,000MW average demand.
The existing coal powered plants in Hwange, Bulawayo, Munyati and Harare are producing below capacity because of obsolete equipment, which is prone to incessant breakdowns.
The country’s largest hydro-power plant in Kariba is also producing far below its 750MW installed capacity due to low water levels as a result of El-Niño induced drought.
This has forced the country to import power from regional producers such as South Africa, Mozambique and the DRC. Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Power Company has said it was going ahead with its proposed establishment of a 100MW photovoltaic solar power station and a 15-17km of 132kV grid transmission in Gwanda.
The solar power station is aimed at increasing Zimbabwe’s power generation capacity. “The proposed power station site is prescribed for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) in terms of the Environmental Management Act and ZPC is undertaking the EIA process to satisfy the legal requirements and also achieve best practice,” said ZPC.
As part of the consultative process ZPC, through its consultant, Ascon Africa, is in the process of consulting all key stakeholders of the project. ZPC warned that the establishment of the power project will have an impact of visual intrusion, noise, disruption of ecology and interaction between site vehicles and public traffic.