The Zimbabwe Electricity Regulatory Authority on Thursday announced a 270% hike in power tariffs, a move certain to trigger a fresh round of price increases across the board and push the cost of living beyond the reach of many families.
The authority’s commissioner general, Mavis Chidzonga, said the tariff hike had the blessings of President Robert Mugabe, who many Zimbabweans blame for plunging the once-prosperous country into an economic crisis described by the World Bank as the worst in the world outside a war zone.
The tariff hike, which comes barely five months after the electricity authority increased the cost of electricity by 95%, will see companies and other commercial consumers paying 270% more for their power.
Vulnerable groups such as working-class consumers in cities and rural consumers will pay 95% more for electricity beginning November 1, the date the new tariffs became effective.
Farmers, most of who are senior officials of the ruling Zanu-PF party and the government, will also have power tariffs going up by 95%, as will state institutions and departments.
Chidzonga said: “The percentage increases take into account soaring generation, transmission and distribution costs involved in the supply of electricity.
“The commission also considered the cost of importing an average 35% of Zimbabwe electricity requirements from regional utilities. Importing electricity is inevitable as local generation capacity is insufficient to cover the national demand of around 2 000 megawatts.”
Zimbabwe imports about 100 megawatts a month from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 200 megawatts from Mozambique, 450 megawatts from South Africa and 300 megawatts from Zambia to augment local supplies.
But frequent breakdowns at ageing power stations have meant routine blackouts for Zimbabweans who in some cases can go for several weeks without electricity.
The power crisis is, however, just one of many severe symptoms of Zimbabwe’s seven-year-old economic crisis that has also spawned shortages of fuel, essential medicines, hard cash and just about every basic survival commodity. — ZimOnline