By Rudo Saungweme

Local industries have urged Government to increase electricity generation capacity from the current 2 260 MW to at least 11 500 MW if the country was to realise Vision 2030 of turning Zimbabwe into an upper middle income economy.

The call was made at a Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC) energy crisis meeting held at a local hotel on Monday.

The industry urged government to increase electricity tariffs to match the prevailing interbank exchange rate.

For Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) to be viable, the industry said electricity tariffs should be increased from the current RTGS ZWl $9,86 cents per kw/h, which is less than US $0,01 per kw/h using the interbank exchange rate, to an equivalent of US $0,14 per kw/h.

The industry stated that the increase in electricity tariffs would enable the power utility company to cover its operational costs and improve its infrastructure to ensure reliable provision of power.

The local firms argued that the increase would still be cheaper than running a generator which costs between US $ 0, 30 and US $ 0, 38 per kwh.

However, the firms say that the increase must be matched with improved electricity provision.

The industry also called on ZESA to work on a strategy to recover the US $1.2 billion debt it is owned by various consumers. They said there was need to index the debt to the interbank rate especially for corporate customers, saying this would curb the erosion of the debt value.

They also bemoaned the power and fuel shortages which they said were crippling them, leading to compromised quality of products. They added that they were failing to fulfil both local and international orders. The generators, they said, were increasing the cost of production and had inflationary effects on prices.

Zimbabwe is facing acute shortage of electricity which has seen load shedding stretching for 16 hours. However, government is in talks with South Africa’s Eskom for the country to have power supply.