MINING firms in Zimbabwe have been told to pay for electricity using foreign currency, said Bloomberg News citing the southern African country’s energy minister, Fortune Chasi.
However, mining companies can make their own arrangements to import foreign power, the minister said. “The purpose of the structure is to ensure mining entities have sufficient power,” said Chasi. “We can’t afford stoppages.”
Zimbabwe last week outlawed foreign currency as legal tender and officially reintroduced the Zimbabwean dollar. This comes a decade after it was wiped out by hyperinflation, said Bloomberg News. Units like the dollar and South Africa’s rand had been considered valid currency since 2009, it said.
The state-owned power utility, Zesa Holdings, cuts power to most consumers for 18 hours a day, seven days a week, after drought collapsed its main hydro-power plant.
A lack of available power and currency pressures hurt Zimbabwe’s mining sector in the first three months of the year, it was reported in May.
“Preliminary figures indicate that the first quarter was not a good performing period for our mining industry as most key minerals recorded some negative growth,” Isaac Kwesu, CEO of Zimbabwe’s Chamber of Mines told Reuters.
Mining generates most of the export earnings for the southern African nation, which faces a severe shortage of dollars that has led to a scarcity of fuel and medicines, said Reuters.
