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This was threatening the revival of the sector which has registered massive productivity increases in the past year and is expected to further grow by 44 percent this year.
Chamber president Mr Victor Gapare said power generation should be increased as a matter of urgency to meet growing demands.
“Some operations have reported outages of up to 25 percent of operating time, at such high level it is difficult to maintain schedules of production as projected,” he said.
Power utility, Zesa Holdings had to step up efforts to expand generating capacity of existing power stations, Mr Gapare said.
“The solution is to build new power stations and we know that Zesa has already appointed some consultants to review the feasibility studies for Hwange 7 and 8 and Kariba South expansion.”
“At the same time, some financial consultants have been appointed to come up with a financial plan for the raising of the capital; we hope this work can be speeded up so that the country can have adequate power in the next five years,” said Mr Gapare.
Use of alternative sources of power, he said, was not sustainable.
Some mines, particularly gold producers, have installed generators that are expensive to run.
“In addition to down time which is costly, in terms of lost production, unscheduled outages damage electrical equipment,” added Mr Gapare. – New Ziana
Online Reporter