Lusaka — Zambia has started rationing electricity to nonmining businesses, a move expected to hurt industrial production and commercial services, business groups said.
The country began rationing power on Saturday to address a daily electricity deficit of 273MW, said Henry Kapata, spokesperson for state power utility Zesco.
"If generation is maintained at the current level, Kariba dam will drain to minimum operating level by November," Kapata said, referring to Zambia's largest hydropwer plant.
"All customers shall be subjected to this for four hours daily but mining companies have their own agreements, which we signed with them."
Zambia is Africa's second-largest copper producer, and copper exports account for 70% of its total export earnings and 12.2% of its GDP.
Mining industry sources said electricity rationing had not affected the sector but would be likely to if the situation worsened.
The Zambia Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Zacci), an industry body, said the electricity rationing would push up production costs as firms switched to other forms of energy.
Firms that cannot afford to switch to alternative sources of electricity such as diesel power, may be forced to cut output and lay off workers, said Zacci president Michael Nyirenda.
"We already have other serious issues like the depreciation of the kwacha and planned introduction of sales tax next month, so the power rationing will just make it worse," Nyirenda said.
A new, nonrefundable sales tax replacing value-added tax was meant to have been introduced on April 1, but has been postponed to July to allow more consultation.
Zambia Association of Manufacturers president Roseta Chabala said her organisation would ask Zesco to reduce the power rationing for manufacturers.
"We have some concrete proposals on how the load-shedding time can be reduced," Chabala said
Reuters
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