Mono Currency Switch Made ZESA Lose $4 Billion - Report

Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority director had explained to the parliamentary energy commission in parly that the June switch to using RTGS $ as the sole legal tender resulted in the power utility company losing a lot of cash. ZESA Group FD Mr Chikwenhere said the switch meant ZESA tariffs were the cheapest in the region. Mr Chikwenhere said:

We also have problems relating to the exchange rate itself because we have huge loans, more than US$600 million. So, for importing purposes, there are finance costs attached to the loans, each time there is movement there are exchange losses.

So, as I’m talking, we now have exchange losses amounting to US$4 billion. So, the figures that I expect to see at the end of this financial year are quite horrendous. We just have to manage the situation but we have to manage it through the tariff adjustment formula.

The discontinuing of the multi-currency system has introduced another dimension. We have loans which require to have extro accounts and extro accounts require to have US dollars,

ZESA this week announced it will review tariffs every 3 months.

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