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Engineer Josh Chifamba

Zimbabweans on Tuesday woke up to very encouraging news when Zesa Holdings announced that a potentially devastating load shedding had been averted. This was after the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and Zesa Holdings struck a payment deal to liquidate arrears to Eskom of South Africa within the next four months.

The South African power giant had given Zesa up to last Wednesday to liquidate its arrears or risk being switched off over a $43 million debt. Eskom also confirmed the positive development at the weekend saying the new position was as a result of Zesa’s proactive engagement. Zesa chief executive, Engineer Josh Chifamba said they made progress towards settling the debt but would not give details.

Sources, however, said Zesa was proposing to pay about $10 million a month towards liquidating the debt. Eskom spokesperson Mr Khulu Phasiwe said Zesa would not be switched off as it was making frantic efforts to clear the arrears. “The Zimbabwe central bank wrote to us and is providing a Government guarantee for the debt,” he said.

Mr Phasiwe said it was not an unusual arrangement for the State to provide a guarantee because even Eskom also has a Government guarantee for the debts which it owes. We want to commend Eskom for demonstrating its commitment to continue doing business with Zesa and hope Zesa on its part will reciprocate by striving to clear its arrears.

Government through the RBZ should prioritise the clearing of Zesa arrears to Eskom and Hydro Cahora Bassa of Mozambique to guarantee the country steady power supplies. The country at this juncture cannot afford load shedding given that many companies are working on programmes to increase capacity utilisation while others have just resumed production after being idle for many years.

The mining sector which is among the critical sectors that the country is banking on to turnaround the economy will be adversely affected by load shedding. Efforts should therefore be directed at ensuring that the country has adequate electricity at any given time.

Electricity consumers, both commercial and domestic who awe Zesa millions of dollars should do their best to clear their arrears so that Zesa is able to make regular payments to its suppliers. The permanent solution to our present challenge,however, is for the country to generate enough electricity to meet its demand.

It is our fervent hope that the many projects being undertaken by Zesa Holdings to increase power generation will be completed in time so that the country has adequate electricity and even produce surplus for export. Zimbabwe at the moment consumes 1 400MW daily against a generating capacity of 980MW so we need to increase generating capacity by at least 420MW to meet demand.

Government working closely with the private sector is aggressively marketing the country as an investment destination of choice and one of the investors’ demands is uninterrupted electricity supplies. We want to once again implore the RBZ and Zesa to honour their commitment under the new payment plans it will agree with suppliers.