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The institutions under the supervision of the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy must draw up plans and strategies to produce revenue and become self-sufficient, declared Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Wednesday.
Speaking to reporters after a visit to the Ministry, Nyusi pointed to the public electricity company, EDM, the public fuel company Petromoc, the National Petroleum Institute (INP) and Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), which operates the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi river, as among the institutions which should adopt new management standards.
He wanted to see these companies and institutions improve their institutional performance, producing more revenue and reducing their costs of production, thus releasing resources for other areas that require urgent intervention.
“The Ministry is part of the country’s productive area”, Nyusi stressed. “I’ve come here to strengthen the call for greater production”. The institutions operating under the aegis of the Ministry “should produce money”, he insisted. “They are productive areas, and what interests us is to make them profitable”.
Nyusi was also concerned at the large debts which state bodies and private companies had run up to EDM and to Petromoc. Some of those who owe money to EDM and Petromoc are foreign companies, he added, though he did not name these debtors.
At the start of Nyusi’s visit, the Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy, Leticia Klemens, said that this area of the economy grew by 15.3 per cent in 2016, and surpassed its targets by 1.7 per cent.
Exports had increased by 33 per cent. The main contributions came from coal, titanium minerals, and natural gas, and a large part of the gains is clearly due to a recovery in the international prices for these commodities.
But in the electricity sector, the targets for 2016 were missed by eight per cent. Electricity generation declined by two per cent over the 2015 figure, said Klemens, blaming this on the southern African drought, which had lowered the water levels in the major dams, particularly Cahora Bassa, thus reducing the capacity to generate power.
Among the major energy projects for the five year period 2015-2019, the Minister added, are a second power station at Cahora Bassa (generating 1,245 megawatts), the first phase of the M’panda Nkua dam, 60 kilometres downstream from Cahora Bassa (1,500 megawatts), the Lupata and Boroma dams, also in the Zambezi basin (600 and 200 megawatts respectively), and the Alto Malema dam in the northern province of Nampula (60 megawatts).
But all of these projects have been on the drawing board for several years, and none of them has yet moved into the construction phase.
“We shall promote the construction of electricity transmission lines resilient to climate change in Tete, Inhambane, Maputo province, Gaza, Sofala and Nampula, as well as the line linking Mozambique and Malawi”, pledged Klemens.
Priority projects that are now completed, the Minister said, include the floating power station at Nacala (115 megawatts), the gas fired power station at Ressano Garcia, on the South African border (100 megwatts), and the rehabilitation of EDM’s hydroelectric power stations at the Mavuzi and Chicamba dams on the Revue river in Manica province.
Nyusi also chaired a meeting of the Ministry’s Consultative Council. This was held behind closed doors, unlike similar meetings Nyusi chaired in the first two ministries he visited (the Ministries of Agriculture and of Public Works), which were open to the press.
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