By Hailegebriel Endeshaw
Staff reporter
ADDIS ABABA – (BORKENA) – Sudan is falling short of expectation to settle payment to Ethiopia for electricity service, source said. The Amharic Weekly Reporter said last Wednesday that as Sudan has not finalized settling the due payments for power provision, it has become significant to call for intervention from the Government side.
Reporter quoted Director of Communications with Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP), Moges Mekonnen, as saying that though Sudan had to settle the entire power service payment on a monthly basis, it has not been doing so as of last year. Therefore, Ethiopia is expecting an unspecified amount of payment from Sudan, Moges said.
Reporter said that efforts have been bolstered to process the execution of payments through the Electric Power companies of the two countries. However, there is a need for the governments to be involved in the initiative, according to the Director of Communications.
Moges said that currently Ethiopia exports electricity to three neighboring countries. These countries are reportedly settling payments in due time without any problems. “Sudan was also expected to do the same. However, though there is an effort to clear the payments to a certain limit, still more is expected from Sudan to finalize full disbursements,” Moges said.
The communications Director told the Reporter that EEP has not faced any problems with other countries concerning payments for power provision. He also expressed the opinion that the problem with Sudan regarding the payment might be caused by internal problems.
Of the 59 million USD, which the government planned to generate from power service provision, 48.23 million USD was collected. This 82 per cent execution could have been achieved in a much better percent if the power export to Kenya had not been launched far behind the plan, according to Moges.
“The government planned to launch the power export to Kenya last year, but unfortunately the implementation process has been very late and is still in a trial phase. The original plan was to generate 8 million USD from Kenya over the last seven months. However, it has been possible to collect only USD 3.9 million,” Moges said.
Ethiopia is working towards exporting electricity to other African Countries, sources said.
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82% payment rate is high enough for me knowing we black folks like to fall arrears in our payment obligations. We don’t cut our grass and in the meantime hate to be ‘disrespected. Them black folks!!!