Saturday, 04 September 2010 12:01
By Frank Kimboy
The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) is on its way to becoming
the first pensions fund in the country to engage in electricity
generation.
Early this year the Parliamentary Committee on Public Organizations
Accounts (POAC) appealed to the pension funds to consider investing in
the power sector to help the government in its efforts to ensure
sustainable availability of electricity.
The government has liberalised the sector, with a new law allowing
private companies to compete with Tanzania Electric Supply Company
(Tanesco) for the generation, transmission and supply of electricity.
The move was partly in efforts to curtail a power crisis that recurs
almost every year due to self insufficiency in the energy supply while
a mere 14 per cent of all the population was connected to the national
power grid.
On Tuesday NSSF extended an invitation for technical and financial
proposals from interested consultants as part of the tendering process
for the planned power project.
According to NSSF, consultants would be allowed to bid as a consortium.
The advert indicated the tendering will be conducted through
National Competitive Tendering (NCF) procedure and that those
consultants who aspire to bid have only until October 1 to do so.
In April POAC chairman Mr Zitto Kabwe , advised social security funds
to move in and invest in energy generating projects in order to help
the government in its bid to insure sustainable availability of
electricity in the country.
He told representatives of social security funds in the country that
such an investment would boost the economy, which experiences a
deficit of about 300MW. He said it was a shame that nearly 50 years
after independence the country was yet to produce enough power to
satisfy its needs.
He said the country should spicy up next year’s 50th Independence
Anniversary with injection of an additional 1,000MW into the national
grid.
He also appealed to the government to provide incentives and
supports to social security funds so as to enable them undertake power
production investments.
He said social security institutions have enough funds to venture
into power production projects as one way of supporting economic
investments.
Source: The Saturday Citizen 04 September 2010
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