The government of Tanzania has
announced plans to invest nearly USD 1.2 billion in the Tanzania
Electricity Supply Company (TANESCO) over the next 11 years in a move to
help improve the investment potential of the company by attracting
private sector investors to support improvements to generation,
transmission and distribution facilities.
The
Tanzania energy reforms are expected to attract enough investments to
increase the company’s generation capacity to at least 10,000MW and will
connect at least 75% of Tanzanians to electricity.
According to the Tanzania Electricity
Supply Industry Reform Strategy and Roadmap 2014-2025, the financing of
power projects will move away from the government to the newly engaged
private sector.
“A state-owned generation company will
be established through unbundling from the transmission and
distribution segment by December 2017,” reads the report, “This is
expected to intensify competition in power generation.”
The report goes on to indicate that
the government expects to list the state-owned generation company on the
Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange, but will maintain at least a 51% hold in
the company shares.
Tanzania is the third East African
country to implement this form of an unbundling plan behind Kenya and
Uganda, where similar reforms helped Kenya attract private investors
into the geothermal sector while also increasing access to electricity
from 16.1% in 2009 to 29% in 2013 and reducing losses in Uganda from 38%
to 26%. |
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