Zambia’s manufacturing industry does not mind paying reasonably higher power tariffs if supply is sustained, says the Zambia Association of Manufacturers (ZAM) president, Ashu Sagar.
Speaking last night at a public discussion forum on load shedding, Sagar said a reasonable higher tariff makes sense but supply needed to be sustained. “If it [power] is at a higher tariff, it shouldn’t be erratic but well-planned where the manufacturing industry can plan production.”
Meanwhile, an online poll conducted by News Digger newspaper ahead of the discussion revealed that 65% of the more than 4,000 respondents preferred to pay more for power if it meant an end to load shedding instead of cheap power with load shedding. The results echoed the public’s responses to similar questions posed by Zambian Digest a few months back.
Sagar said one could only call a situation of power rationing as load shedding when the hours of supply in a day are more than the period without power but not the current situation. He raised the alarm of a crisis looming in Zambia’s manufacturing sector bigger than being talked about.
“We need to talk about how it affects jobs, productivity, costs, and the general economic activity in the country.”
He maintained that the pressing question begging an answer is what to do in the short-term to ensure that manufacturers do not lay off anybody and can minimize their costs.
“What do we do about the short term? What do we do about the next six months? Short-term interventions cost money. Is there something we can do on the ZESCO side?”, he prodded.
Sagar stated that the manufacturing industry is relying on alternative power solutions to sustain its operations but “a reasonably higher tariff makes sense and manufacturers don’t mind but we need to have sustained supply.”
Recently, the Energy Regulation Board rejected ZESCO’s application for emergency tariff adjustments that would have seen downward and upward revisions in commercial and domestic tariffs. The emergency tariffs were intended to be applied for nine months to enable ZESCO to raise US$14 million to contribute to the importation of power.
