Africa-Press – Uganda. About 40 Chinese technicians contracted to install machinery for the expansion of ElectroMaxx Limited are yet to return to Uganda.
“We are waiting for a team of forty Chinese technicians to return to Uganda, they had gone to celebrate their new year and when Covid-19 broke out, they have not yet returned,” company chairman Patrick Bitature said in a recent interview.
The company, an Independent Power Producer (IPP) in Africa, produces more than 20 megawatts including low-cost heavy fuel oil (HFO), which will reduce the cost of power in Uganda. The company plans to reduce the cost of power from 35 cents to eight cents per kilowatt unit.
Bitature said the plan is to expand the project with the first phase estimated to cost $100m while the total cost of the expansion program is $300m.
“This project is of critical importance to our economy and government installations because we must always have strategic power in case there is a shortage especially due to the dropping water levels,” he said.
However, the company has not been in production for a year. It ran out of fuel to run generators after Uganda Revenue Authority froze the company accounts over accumulated tax arrears.
Bitature explained that management is still negotiating with government to revive the power production.”
“In the process of negotiations, government also contracted the company to deliver and install four additional generators to Arua, bringing to eight the number of generators in the district. The four generators with the capacity of producing one megawatt each were delivered to Arua from our Tororo plant,” he said.
In 2018, West Nile members of parliament petitioned government about the inadequate power supply in their area, which saw Electromaxx deploy four generators with each generating 1MW that raised the total power generation to 11MW including the output from Nyagak hydro dam.
However, this comes at the coattails of several investors in Tororo sub-region complaining about power shortages which are diminishing production capacities. The executive director of Tororo Cement Limited, B.M Gagrani, said the company would be producing three tonnes of cement per day.
“Our production capacity has reduced from three metric tons to between 2.2 to 2.3 metric tons per day due to consistent power shortages,” he said at a meeting with officials from Uganda Investment Authority (UIA).
The officials conducted an on-the-ground regional tour of eastern Uganda to assess how investors there had been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in Mbale, Tororo and Busia. Gagrani added that despite power shortages, the company is implementing an expansion programme in three phases.
“As of today, we have replaced all the old equipment with updated technology; we are targeting to increase production capacity from 20,000 tonnes to 200,000 per month,” he said, adding that the company has not borrowed any funds for the new technology.
The director at National Cement Company Uganda Limited, Kanti Mepani, told the delegation that through the expansion, they plan to invest $70m and build capacity from one line production to three with a turnover of 300,000 tonnes per day.
“However, the development and expansionist policies of the company have faced challenges including daily power outages,” he said. Busia Sugar and Allied Limited Production manager Martin Onyango explained that although they plan to invest another $5m in the expansion programme, power shortages are hurting production capacity. “We wrote to Umeme in September; they only gave us a telephone number to call but nobody picks it,” he said.
