Power utility ZESA Holdings intends to hike electricity tariffs, saying the current tariffs have become too low.
This was revealed by the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) acting managing director Lovemore Chinaka when he appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Energy and Power Development recently.
Chinaka said the existing rate was about 2.3 US cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) instead of 10 US cents per kWh, which will enable the power utility to break even.
The fall in the value of the Zimbabwe dollar against the United States dollar since the last tariff review had made electricity prices too low and this has put ZESA’s long term viability under threat. Chinaka said:
The long-term impact would be that we will be unable to fix the grid from a maintenance point if we have natural failures of transformers or lines that are down due to age. You find that our capacity to respond quickly has been eroded.