Galp Foundation supports installation of photovoltaic systems in Cabo Delgado
Selling energy to Zambia is damaging Mozambique Electricity EDM), with Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation (Zesco) last year alone failing to pay more than 6,1 billion meticais, leading to supply to the neighbouring country being cut.
When in March last year the presidents of Mozambique and Zambia, Filipe Nyusi and Edgar Lungo, inaugurated the Nacala Floating Thermoelectric Power Plant in Nampula province, “energy cooperation for the benefit of citizens and economies” between the two countries was among the expectations.
At the time, Zesco owed EDM a little more than 494 million meticais.
Given there is a power deficit for Mozambicans, @Verdade asked EDM where the energy that is exported to Zambia comes from.
The Mozambican state-owned company explained that, in addition to the 111 megawatts generated by the Nacala Floating Thermoelectric Plant, the energy sold to Zambia is the surplus from independent production plants (Ressano Garcia and Gigawatt Mozambique) that EDM buys and resells, supposedly at a profit.
@Verdade verified in the EDM Report and Accounts that during the whole of 2016, Zesco did not pay its accounts, increased its consumption, causing the debt to rise to 6.68 billion meticais until the Mozambican power utility finally decided, on 16 December, to halt the supply of energy to Zambia “for lack of payment”, EDM Director of Economy and Finance, Getá Remigio Manuel Pery confirmed.
subtitle – Zambia’s debt corresponds to about 40 percent of EDM’s debt to independent production plants
Pery clarified to @Verdade that the matter was regerred to the government, EDM’s main shareholder, which has through the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy interacted with the Government of Zambia “to present a payment plan that could be sustainable for the EDM, in view of its commitments to make payments to independent production plants”.
In an e-mail interview, EDM’s Director of Economy and Finance said that following a recent meeting “the Zambian Government presented a payment schedule” but made it clear that “re-connection is dependent on discussion and approval of the terms of a new supply contract”.
Due to this bad business, EDM stopped paying its suppliers during fiscal year of 2016, its 31 December 2015 debt of just over 10 billion meticais more than doubling to 23.9 billion meticais.
About 40 percent of these arrears are payments to suppliers, according to the 2016 Report and Accounts. The Mozambican state-owned electricity company EDM owes 4.076 billion meticais to the Ressano Garcia Thermal Plant, 2.7 billion meticais to Gigawatt Moçambique, 5.6 billion meticais to the Cahora Bassa Hydroelectric Plant, and 2.6 billion meticais to Karpower International, the Turkish company which owns the Nacala Floating Thermoelectric Power Plant
During the fiscal year 2016, EDM returned negative results of 983,432,916 meticais.
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