he Russians, who arrived in Harare last Sunday, and had expressed eagerness to invest in four power generation projects with capacity to yield more than 1 000 megawatts of electricity were also said to have been unhappy with the state-owned Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA)’s finances.
According to sources, the Russian investors openly told officials from the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the Ministries of Energy and Finance that they could not invest in a market where they would be required to sell electricity to only one state-owned company and not directly to consumers.
“They looked to have been on a determined exploration but what they saw at ZESA put them off. Worse still when they discovered that they could not sell their product directly to consumers but to a state-owned company, they showed that they were not too pleased,” said a ZESA official, who spoke on condition he was not named.
Energy Minister Mike Nyambuya could not be reached for comment on the matter.
Zimbabwe has invited potential investors in the generation of electricity that will then be sold to a wholly-owned subsidiary of ZESA, the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission Company (ZETCO).
ZETCO owns and operates the transmission grids and infrastructure in Zimbabwe and is the only one that sells power directly to consumers.
The Russians were also unhappy to sell electricity to ZESA or ZETCO both of which are technically insolvent. – ZimOnline
27.7.2006
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Uncertainty hangs over Russian energy deal
HARARE - It was uncertain this week whether Russian energy firm TurboEngineering would invest in Zimbabwe's energy sector after officials from the company expressed dissatisfaction at the southern African country's single buyer model for electricity and erratic subsidies from the government.
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