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Golden Sibanda Senior Business Reporter
POWER utility Zesa Holdings has secured an additional US$35 million from regional bank, African Export and Import Bank, to complete the installation of prepaid meters across the country.
Zesa Holdings spokesperson Mr Fullard Gwasira confirmed the development saying disbursements under the facility will start soon with a total of 500 000 installations targeted by August.

“Zesa Holdings secured a total of US$70 million from Afreximbank. About US$35 million was used for the first phase of the programme while US$35 million has been secured for the next.

“So far a total of 350 000 prepaid meters have been installed across the country out of a target of 800 000 with the remainder to be installed by end of year,” Mr Gwasira said.

It is envisaged that pre-paid meters when complete will result in mutual benefits for both consumers of electricity and the power utility.
Mr Gwasira said Zesa will get guaranteed income as consumers will have to pay first and that would ensure consistency of inflows for rehabilitation and maintenance of infrastructure. This would allow Zesa to maintain power grid stability.

The utility will deduct a small amount from prepaid payments towards clearing customers’ arrears. Zesa is owed US$800 million, with US$280 million the amount owed by domestic users.

On the other hand, consumers will see an end to the controversies around estimated or post paid bills, including multiple billing, while the customers will be able to use power according to their own budgets.

The power utility believes that the pre-paid meters will encourage the customers to use power sparingly, allowing the power utility to reduce load shedding in other parts of the country.

This development comes at a time Zesa has just discovered that some consumers were tampering with meters to reduce bills, prejudicing the utility of the income it needs to sustain supplies.

Inevitably, Zimbabwe has to find efficient ways of using its limited power with generating capacity standing at an average 1 200 megawatts against a national peak period demand of 2 200MW.

Zesa resorted to rolling power cuts in a bid to balance the mismatch between demand and supply but this had resulted in unbearable costs and inconveniences for domestic and commercial users.

It is against this background that the country is pursuing expansion projects for Kariba South, to add 300MW and Hwange Power Station units 7 and 8, to add another 600MW to the national grid.

Zimbabwe signed a US$319 million agreement with China Eximbank for the expansion of Kariba South Hydro Project while another Chinese firm, China Engineering and Machinery Company is yet to secure a financier for the US$2 billion expansion of Hwange Thermal Power Station.

Finance and Economic Development Minister Patrick Chinamasa yesterday said Government would promote investments into small hydro power projects in an attempt to ease the country’s power deficit.

Apart from projects being pursued by Government, private players are working on initiatives that will bring a total of 600MW to the national grid in a development that will further ease the deficits.