Zimbabwe signs power deal with SA company

Zimbabwe’s power utility, ZESA said on Tuesday it had signed a preferential electricity import deal with South Africa’s energy company, Eskom, under which power charges would be reduced and its 1.1 billion- Zimbabwe-dollar ( US $20 million) debt would be restructured, news reports said on Wednesday. Under the deal, ZESA will re-pay 480 million Zimbabwe dollars of its debt to Eskom before the end of the year, and open a bank account in Zimbabwe for the South African company in which it will be depositing local currency for import payments. Eskom will then convert the Zimbabwe dollars as and when there is foreign currency available in the country. ZESA, which only generates 60 percent of Zimbabwe’s power needs, has been rationing electricity for most of 2000, and is saddled with a huge debt to energy companies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique and Zambia where it imports the shortfall.