Maputo — Mozambique's publicly owned electricity company, EDM, in the 2022 financial year recorded its highest ever net profits, of 5,220 million meticais (about 81.6 million dollars, at the current exchange rate).
This compares with profit of 2,099 million meticais recorded in 2021. The figure was announced at an EDM Ordinary General Meeting, held in Maputo last Friday.
According to an EDM press release, the meeting also analysed the current stage of implementation of previous decisions, and approved the EDM's Report and Accounts for the 2022 financial year.
The amount of energy that EDM provided to the electricity system rose from 7,694 Gigawatt-hours (GWh) in 2021 to 8,146 GWh in 2022, which is a growth of about six per cent.
"The volume of energy exported was 1,730 GWh in 2022, compared to 1,642 GWh in 2021, representing a growth of five per cent', said the release. "The volume of energy consumed in the country was 4,621 GWh, in 2022, against 4,274 in 2021, which is a growth of eight per cent'.
Also last year, EDM's business generated revenue of 46,830 million meticais against 42,595 million meticais in 2021, a growth of 10 per cent.
As for new customers connected to the National Electricity Grid (REN), for the first time, EDM made 356,640 new connections, exceeding by 11.5 percent the target set in the Company's Business Plan, which was 320,000.
In the same period, 11 Administrative Posts were connected to the national grid.
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The total number of EDM clients rose from 2,588,588 in 2021 to 2,936,751 in 2022, which is a growth of 14 per cent.
The Domestic Access Rate of the population to power from the National Grid increased by four percentage points, from 39 per cent in 2021 to 43 per cent in 2022.
EDM says it succeeded in recovering 23.5 million dollars of debt owed by the Zambian and Zimbabwean electricity companies. This helped reduce EDM's general stock of debt by 12 per cent between 2021 and 2022.
At the General Meeting, the Chairperson of the EDM Board, Marcelino Alberto, stressed that despite Cyclones Ana and Gome, in the centre and north of the country, and the sabotage of electrical installations and theft of energy, the company ended 2022 in a more resilient state.
But he regarded the sabotage of electricity infrastructures as a very serious problem, and called for additional legislation to discourage such vandalism, so that, rather than simply replacing damaged equipment, EDM "can focus on its mission of bringing good quality electricity to all Mozambicans by 2030'.
