03 Feb 2014

Electricity tariffs are expected to be periodically adjusted accordingly in order for them to reflect the economic cost of the country’s power supply, Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Mr Kenneth Matambo has said.

Delivering the 2014/2015 budget on Monday, February 3, Minister Matambo said government continued to strive to maintain adequate power supply in the country, despite the relatively high cost of providing it.

“This is in realisation of the fact that power is one of the critical inputs towards productive investment”, he said. Minister Matambo said continued technical problems at Morupule B Power Station have created uncertainty over the availability of power supply in the short to medium term.

In recognition of the importance of power supply to economic growth and ordinary lives in general, he said government has taken short and medium term measures to mitigate the impact of power supply shortage on the economy.

He said the Botswana Power Corporation (BPC) has been allocated a significant amount under the proposed budget to enable the corporation not only to maintain its existing power infrastructure, but to also put new transmission lines.

As a way to also address the demands for power supply, Mr Matambo said government had come up with developmental projects of the Brown and Green Fields for Morupule B, which both have an estimated power generation of 300 MW each.

He stated that government was working on the expansion of the national grid to provide services to villages, agribusinesses, mining and tourism facilities.

“To this end, government has budgeted P300 million for the construction of the northwest transmission grid and Rakola Sub station to provide power to the North West region and augment power in the south eastern region."

On recognising water as yet another critical ingredient to economic growth, Minister Matambo said government continued to exploit alternative water sources such as affluent waste water utilisation, grey water cycling and rain water harvesting.This, he said, was to the fact that the country has been experiencing water shortages for both human and agricultural use due to recurring drought.

He said the first step in a process to ensure that water is properly positioned to meet the needs of the nation, has been development of the comprehensive National Water and Waste Water Policy which has been approved by cabinet in 2012 and will be submitted for approval by Parliament this year. ENDS