Mozambique: Power utility lost 5 billion meticais to electricity theft this year

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Mozambique: Power utility lost 5 billion meticais to electricity theft this year

1:22 CAT | 20 Dec 2022

In file CoM

State-owned company Eletricidade de Moçambique (EDM) lost around five billion meticais ( 74 million euros) this year to the theft of electricity within the country, the chairman of the board of directors announced on Tuesday.

“We have registered, at alarming levels, the growing rate of energy theft, both by domestic customers and by large customers,” Marcelino Gildo said during an award ceremony for journalists in a competition promoted by the company.

In 2022, EDM has so far lost around 41 million meticais (€605,000) as a result of 265 cases of vandalism of electrical infrastructure in the country.

Adding together the losses from vandalism and theft of energy over the last four years, EDM “lost the opportunity to supply energy” to more than 500,000 new customers, Gildo concluded.

According to EDM, the situation constitutes one of the company’s “biggest challenges”, as it “begins to compromise the achievement of the goal of universal access to energy for all Mozambicans by 2030”.

Source: Lusa