Mozambique's Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Castigo Langa, declared on Monday that it is imperative that the country's largest dam, at Cahora Bassa on the Zambezi, should without further delay benefit the Mozambican people.
The dam operating company, Hidroelectrica de Cahora Bassa (HCB), is still 82 per cent owned by the Portuguese state, and most of the power produced is exported to South Africa. Thanks to agreements of the 1970s, Mozambique has to negotiate with both Portugal and the South African power utility, Eskom, if it wants to increase the amount of Cahora Bassa power used inside Mozambique.
Speaking at the opening of a meeting of his Ministry's Coordinating Council in the northern city of Pemba, Langa stressed that it was "no longer acceptable that the dam is not being used for the Mozambican people".
There was now some urgency in Mozambique taking control of Cahora Bassa because of the growing demand for electricity inside the country, thanks particularly to "investment in industries based on intensive power consumption".
Mozambique has made no secret of its desire to take a majority holding in HCB. The Portuguese government has been resisting because of HCB's huge debt to the Portuguese treasury (estimated by Portuguese sources at around two billion US dollars).
"The restructuring of Cahora Bassa is becoming an urgent requirement", Langa insisted. "We hope that the negotiations that will take place in Lisbon this week will bring satisfactory results. We restate our intention of finding a win-win solution, and, given the gravity of the situation, we should consider the need to use all means at our disposal to solve this dossier in useful time".
One major stumbling block has already been overcome. After years of refusing to pay anything resembling a rational price for Cahora Bassa power, Eskom has agreed to a gradual tariff increase, meaning that HCB will sell its power to South Africa for something more approaching its true value.
"Now that the tariff agreement has been reached", said Langa, "it would be unacceptable for the Mozambican people not to feel the benefits from this".
Looking back at his Ministry's work over the past five years, Langa said it had complied with its part of the government's five year plan. Proof of this was the expansion of electrification to the great majority of the country's rural districts. 110 district capitals now had access to electricity.
As for mining, Langa said there had been a 30 per cent increase in production compared with the previous five years.
He expected further flows of foreign investment into the mining sector, because the ministry now possessed "a computerised data base, with revised and updated charts, with new geological, geophysical and geochemical surveys, that will be accessible to potential investors via the Internet".
Langa announced that building work will soon start on the infrastructures for the Moma heavy mineral sands projects, on the coast of Nampula province, which will produce titanium ores such as ilmenite and rutile. The project will be operated by Kenmare Resources of Ireland, and Langa said that this week an agreement on funding the Moma mine will be signed in Dublin.
The Minister added that technical and economic viability studies have been completed for a much larger heavy sands project, at Chibuto, in the southern project of Gaza. This is the largest known deposit of titanium bearing sands in the world.
The Chibuto deposit will be exploited by Corridor Sands, a company which is owned by the Australian concern Western Mining.
A delegation from Western Mining visited Mozambique last week, and Langa said it gave strong indications that a decision to start work on the project will be taken very soon.
Langa was also optimistic about the prospects of discovering oil. The Malaysian state oil company Petronas has completed geological and geophysical studies near the Zambezi delta. The indications are promising enough for the company to embark on the next step - which is the drilling of a well, in the hope that commercially viable oil deposits will be struck.
Fonte: AIM
