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9 January 2007 - Zimbabwe requires more than $2 bn to build a new hydroelectric station, and to refurbish and expand existing power plants to avert an energy shortfall likely to black out the country and much of Southern Africa this year, according to the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa).
The state-owned power utility said that several projects, some requiring several hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign scarce currency and meant to increase power output, were either lagging behind or had failed to kick off altogether because of hard-cash constraints.
The Southern African Power Pool that coordinates power production and trade in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) forecasts the regional annual total to reach 44 689MW by the end of 2007 against combined net generation capacity of 45 000MW.
The energy shortfall is expected to force countries such as South Africa and Mozambique, which have provided about 40 per cent of Zimbabwe's power requirements, to scale down on exports in order to meet rising demand from their own domestic markets.
The Zesa document shows that while agreement had been reached for Catic of China to provide $600 m for the expansion of generation capacity at Zimbabwe's biggest thermal power station, Hwange, the project was yet to kick off.
"Zesa requested Catic on October 13 2006 to clarify the way forward regarding the implementation of the power-station expansion project. Catic have yet to respond," the document says.
The Hwange expansion project, if eventually implemented, would see power output increasing by 600 MW, a substation and transmission lines constructed, while a huge chunk of funds would go into increasing production of coal from the large deposits of the fossil fuel near the power station.
According to the document, a separate $183 m facility with the same Chinese firm and meant to fund rehabilitation, maintenance, upgrading and expansion of distribution and transmission networks was in trouble after Zesa failed to repay money advanced under the loan scheme owing to hard-cash constraints.
The Zimbabwean firm has also held discussions with the Development Bank of Southern Africa for the bank to provide $126 m to fund building of substations and associated transmission networks but was still to hear from the bank whether or not it shall provide the money.
While agreement had been reached with Russia's TurboEngineering firm to develop more than five mini-hydroelectric plants at a cost of $150 m, work was still to begin to build the power plants, according to the document.
To cap Zimbabwe's funding problems, the cash-strapped Southern African country also needs to raise $1.2 bn to develop the Batoka hydro power plant on the Zambezi River in a project that should be jointly implemented with neighbouring Zambia.
Energy Minister Mike Nyambuya was not immediately available to explain how the government -- shunned by donors, the International Monetary Fund and other global funders -- would ensure that these and other planned power-generation projects would be completed on time to avoid a blackout once neighbouring countries begin scaling down electricity sales to Zimbabwe.
But the predicted energy crisis would only be an addition to a long list of hardships that Zimbabweans have become accustomed to as the country grapples with a severe economic recession described by the World Bank as the worst in the world outside a war zone.
The economic meltdown has seen inflation shooting beyond 1 000 per cent, deepening poverty and shortages of food and just about every basic survival commodity.
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