The chairman of the board of directors (PCA) of Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), Marcelino Alberto, informed this Wednesday, April 5, during the courtesy visit made by the President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, to the Maputo Thermoelectric Power Station (CTM ) that “Zambia paid today the last tranche of 22 million dollars of debt it had with Mozambique due to energy consumption”.
“We had a situation in 2016, when we brought the barge from Nacala. At the time, we supplied energy to Zambia, a process that started that year and ended in 2018. Then we stopped, unfortunately, because of payments, as Zambia was unable to pay us when we finished supplying”, clarified Marcelino Alberto. “We then began negotiating, in 2020, the repayment of that debt, which at the time amounted to 75 million dollars. The payment was made little by little, two million dollars every month”.
Continuing, the EDM director said that “this time we negotiated for them (Zambians) to pay the last tranche (22 million dollars) so that we could resume supply, and that was the condition we put on the table. Zambia’s energy consumption was two years, from 2016 to 2018”.
Marcelino Alberto, during the visit, announced another project that EDM has with Zambia: “in the future we intend to make a 400 megawatt interconnection between the two countries starting from the Matambo substation to the Zambian border. It is a line that we are developing and we have already carried out the feasibility study. It will take US$411 million to build 376 kilometers of line, so we are now mobilizing the funding needed to implement the project”.
Regarding the mobilization of funding, Marcelino Alberto clarified that “the Zambians have an advantage: they got two billion dollars from Qatar and are thinking of using part of that value for this investment”.
In turn, the President of Zambia, Hakainde Hichilema, said that “the security of energy supply is important in our region, for our industry and, in general, for our economy”, he said, and then explained that ” when we hear about security, we immediately think of political issues and violence. Security goes beyond that, as we have energy security which is crucial to our agenda, as it stipulates the growth of our economies and, in the process, the creation of more jobs for young people”.
Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema
Finally, the Zambian head of state defended the “need for the two teams, both Mozambican and Zambian, to work together to take energy from where it is generated to where it is needed or is in demand. This means that we have to invest in our transmission lines”.
