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Mozambique: Cahora Bassa Provides More Electricity to Mozambique
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
28 March 2008
Posted to the web 28 March 2008
Maputo
Mozambique's publicly-owned electricity distribution company, EDM, is to start receiving an added 100 Megawatts from the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi river, as from April, following an agreement signed between EDM and the dam operating company, Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB).
Up to now EDM has been receiving 300 megawatts from Cahora Bassa. The agreement increasing this to 400 megawatts is one of the first clear benefits to Mozambique of the change in ownership of HCB.
Up until last November, HCB was essentially a Portuguese company. The Portuguese state owned 82 per cent of the shares, and the board of directors had a Portuguese majority and a {Portuguese chairperson. But with the Mozambican purchase of a majority stake (85 per cent) in HCB, the picture has changed dramatically.
The dam is no longer a Portuguese enclave walled off from the rest of the economy. It is now paying both taxes and dividends (which never happened under Portuguese ownership) and is guided by Mozambican development goals.
The extra 100 megawatts will greatly assist EDM's plans to electrify the countryside, and to improve the quality of the power it sells to its clients.
However, HCB's main client remains the South African electricity company, Eskom, which purchases around 1,500 megawatts. The Zimbabwean power utility, ZESA, has been purchasing around 150 megawatts - but the Zimbabweans have been put on notice that this can be cut, if they do not pay their bills. In January, Zimbabwe was disconnected for 11 days until ZESA paid HCB 10 million US dollars.
HCB has five turbines, each capable of generating 415 megawatts, giving a total, theoretical capacity of 2,075 megawatts. Rehabilitation of the turbines was recently undertaken, which means that the dam now operates close to its full potential.
HCB is easily the most important source of power for EDM, but the latter also owns two dams of its own, at Chicamba and Mavuzi, on the Revue river in Manica province. EDM plans to rehabilitate them in the coming years so as to maximize their power output.
The chairperson of EDM board, Manuel Cuambe, cited in Friday's issue of the Maputo daily "Noticias", said that in 2007 EDM connected 95,000 new clients, and managed to link more district capitals to the national grid.
He added that EDM had a total revenue of about 158 million US dollars in 2007, which was a 25 per cent increase on the 2006 figure, and he attributed this to improvements in the company's management system.
He also referred to an increase in the installation of the pre-paid system, known as 'credelec', which is now used by 58 per cent of EDM's clients, as a further factor that helped the company's gains.
The pre-paid system is convenient for the company in that it does not have to issue invoices or chase up debtors. For consumers though, the pre-paid system is much more expensive than a contract with EDM, and its sole advantage is that it allows people to control their energy expenditure so that they will not run up unpayable bills.
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Bm/pf (521)
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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