ZESCO, MINES SEAL DEAL ON POWER TARIFFS 

Fri, 22 Sep 2017 13:27:27 +0000

By Bennie Mundando

WE will begin to invoice our mines with newly-negotiated tariffs following a completion of engagements between a delegation of six ministers and the mining firms which has just concluded its task this month, Zesco managing Director Victor Mundende has said.

Speaking during a press briefing at the Zesco headquarters in Lusaka yesterday, Mr. Mundende said Zesco was happy that the negotiations between Government and the mining companies had been concluded.

“Government had formed a taskforce of six ministers that negotiated the tariffs with the mines. I am happy to report that the negotiations have been very fruitful and the result of these adjustments is that there has been an adjustment in the tariffs to the mining customers.

“These negotiations went on until this month when we concluded with our mining customers and so going forward, we will be invoicing our customers on the negotiated tariffs,” Mr. Mundende said.

He also said the corporation had come up initiatives for industrial and commercial customers that will see a reduction in the tariffs for those that will revert to using electricity during non-peak hours by conducting their businesses in the night.

He encouraged farmers who used power for irrigation purposes to embrace the initiative by watering their crops at night when demand for electricity reduced to enable them operate at reduced rates.

“We are introducing “time of use tariffs” to our industrial and commercial customers so that we can encourage them to do their business outside the peak hours.  We are doing this because we want to encourage users like our farmers to irrigate in the night.

“We have introduced a reduced tariff so that we remove the normal pattern of their operations by utilising the non-peak hours for them to get the power they need. So we encourage them to do business outside the normal business hours because what you can do during the day, they can still do it in the night,” he said.

And Mr. Mundende said Zesco has embarked on an interconnection exercise by taking advantage of the country’s land-linked status to realise its objective of becoming a power trading hub by 2025.

“We want to be a hub for power trading by 2025 in the region and we realised we could only achieve this if we do interconnectors and so we are busy with a lot of interconnectors to our neighbouring countries. Everyone is aware that Zambia has eight neighbours and so, we are uniquely positioned and we have to take advantage of this.

“If we were connected before with our neighbours, perhaps we would not have experienced the 2015/2016 crisis the way we experienced it. Therefore, we are busy in ensuring that we do the interconnectors,” Mr. Mundende said.