22 November 2008
THE country's first commercial bio-diesel plant, commissioned amid pomp and fanfare last year, is operating at less than five percent capacity, investigations revealed last week.
Workers at the gigantic plant in Harare -- once touted as the panacea to the country's perennial -- said they were producing "a few hundreds of litres" of diesel and cooking oil a month.
They attributed the false start to an acute shortage of Jatropha, cotton seed, sunflower, soya beans and maize to produce diesel and cooking oil.
When standardbusiness visited the plant just before midday on Thursday, the plant with a capacity to produce between 90-100 million litres of diesel annually was silent.
"For the past year, we have been using cotton seed for the production of diesel and cooking oil but it has run out," said a worker speaking on condition that he was not named.
"We can't use maize or soya beans because there is hunger. People need them for food."
At least 500 tonnes of seed oil is required annually to produce the targeted 100 million litres of bio-diesel.
"We have to wait for the Jatropha seedlings to mature otherwise we are wasting our time," said another worker.
It takes between two and three years for a Jatropha seedling to mature.
The worker said when the fuel is available at the plant anyone can buy using foreign currency. He said initially they were selling the diesel for US$1.35 a litre, but the price was being reviewed following the drop in fuel prices globally.
Only one of the tanks was said to be full of diesel, which was being sold in foreign currency.
Most of the fuel, the workers said, was being sold to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), which was heavily involved in the setting up of the plant.
Edward Madyavanhu, finance and administration manager of Transload Enterprises -- a company that manages the plant -- refused to comment referring all questions to the company's managing director, Douglas Musiiwa.
Musiiwa could not be reached for comment.
During the plant's commissioning last year, government officials said it would meet 10% of Zimbabwe's annual diesel requirements, which translates to foreign currency savings of US$80 million annually.
RBZ Governor Gideon Gono said the central bank has set aside funds to support a Jatropha feed stock growing programme.
"Under the programme beneficiaries of Zimbabwe's land reform programme will receive support to grow Jatropha on marginal land as the country works towards its target of achieving fuel self-sufficiency by 2010," said Gono.
He also announced government would set up one bio-diesel plant for each of the provinces by 2010.
However, the project seems to have stalled.
RBZ spokesperson Kumbirai Nhongo did not respond to questions emailed to him last week.
Experts however say there is need to guard against diverting productive land and food crops to the production of biofuels at the expense of regional food security.
The World Food Programme (WFP) says over five million people will need food aid at the beginning of next year.
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