The state-run company Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB) revealed an increase in 46 percent on the tariff charged to Eskom”, meanwhile it kept the taboo on the price that South African electricity purchase energy. 

@Verdade investigation found that the rate until 2017 was 35 US cents per kilowatt / hour (kWh), ten times less than the price that “our HCB” sells to the Electricity of Mozambique (EDM).

HCB presented last Tuesday (28) some results of the 2017 exercise, speaking at the event that took place in Maputo the CEO of HCB, Pedro Couto, stressed: “the performance of the HCB company in 2017 was positive in terms of operating results despite hydrological constraints and an adverse macroeconomic context. “

Revenues, which are invoiced in Rands since 1969, reduced about 12 percent, as a result of the fall of the amount of energy sold, decreased from 13,788 in 2016 to 11,968. However this revenue expressed in meticais recorded a growth of 15 billion meticais to 15.6 billion.

“In the recipes to a given key to share with those present were negotiations with Eskom which took place during the last quarter of 2017, the PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) with Eskom states that every five years ago a review of the tariff, the negotiation of the last quarter, and that was five years since the last trade that had been in 2013, resulted in an amending increasing rate. It was a feat, a milestone to record, an increase in 46 percent order on the tariff charged to Eskom, “said Manuel Gameiro, Financial Director of Cahora Bassa.

Discussing the financial performance only positive Gameiro said that while “the date of effectiveness of this new rate is this year, 2018, and there is an effect that is already felt on the company’s revenues. June 2018 data indicates a 39-percent growth of the company’s revenue compared to the same period of 2017 “.

However the PCA and the financial administrator did not reveal what was the net result of HCB in the year 2017 or which is the non-current liabilities and current loans obtained last year keeping the lack of transpired this company that you want to quote in the Stock Market values ​​of Mozambique.

Incidentally the Cahora Bassa not yet published the Annual Report 2017, as law nor responded to document formal requests made by @Verdade.

Increase of 35 to 51 US cents per kWh, Mozambique Electricity pays 3.5 US dollars

Asked by journalists about the Eskom that rate paid before the said increase agreed Manuel Gameiro kept the taboo that lasts long before the “HCB be ours.”

“About what exactly the current rate, there are contractual confidentiality issues over which the HCB must submit to and I can not in this forum, and by virtue of these principles, I can not disclose specific values ​​of rates with our customers,” he said.

It’s no secret that being the main client of hydro, since before its construction, the South African electricity company has imposed the price paid by the energy that agreed to buy from the sixties and you want to buy in the coming decades.

But @Verdade found that price that Eskom began to pay 3 cents Rand per kilowatt / hour, since the inauguration of HCB until 1988, when accepting renegotiate for a 2 Rands kWh rate that remained unchanged until 2000.

With the end of war and the renewal of the hydroelectric transmission lines from Cahora Bassa forced a renegotiation of tariffs, which ended with a unilateral cut of power supply at the end of the nineties, and only after a complaint to the Arbitration Court of Paris is that in 2002 Eskom agreed to increase the price to buy three Rands kWh.

Already after the end of apartheid and the time that Mozambique wanted to take majority control of HCB again appeal to the goodwill of South Africa that took @Verdade know to renegotiate future contracts whose duration is not public and that kept the cost of power to Eskom as one of the cheapest in the world, even if he had reached the 5 Rands per kilowatt / hour, about 35 cents of the US dollar, and it is on this rate which focuses the increase announced this week.

It is recalled that the EDM, which has the mission to illuminate Mozambique, purchasing power HCB to 3.5 US dollars per kilowatt / hour, ten times more than the Eskom gets, and can not even wish to purchase more electricity for the south African company has reserved for itself 70 percent of all energy produced by HCB.