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Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, May 2012 — The Ethiopia Electric power
Corporation (EEPCO) is on the point of embarking on an ambitious project
that aims to connect East and South Africa countries on the basis of
electric power transmission lines. According to Mihret Debebe, ECO of
the corporation, Ethiopia will be at the center of this Eastern African
electric highway project selling hydroelectric power to countries. The
project, which kicks off by installing power transmission line to Kenya,
will be by far the largest electric line transmission installation
project in the continent.
“So far, only the border city of Moyale has been connected to the
Ethiopian grid system,” said Mihret. However, thanks to the approval of
the loan in the order of USD 1.3 billion by the World Bank and the
African Development Bank this week, Ethiopia will sell electricity to
more towns in Kenya. Mihiret noted that the design and study of the
project has already been completed and it is ready to be floated for a
bid. The two institutions reached at the decision to provide the loan
after deliberating on the matter in Washington last week. Furthermore,
Mihret noted that Somaliland is on the list to be the next Eastern
African country to receive power from Ethiopia.
In a related story, the EEPCO announced that some 200 billion birr
($11.4b) is required within the next five years to complete electric
power expansion.
Mihret said that it is possible to get that amount of money for the
expansion and related works as Ethiopia is becoming trustworthy
regarding its massive activities in electric power investment. And this
helps the corporation to access loans from different potential lenders.
The electric power projects that are arguably the most expensive
investments in the country has a budget of over than 42 billion birr
($2.4b) for the current fiscal year.
Mihiret said that some 21 years ago, the electric power sector had only
hundreds of millions of birr as annual budget which has currently
reached hundreds of billions of birr. For the project that will be
implemented in the next five years, all costs have been divided for each
year and the draft budget is expected to be made official in the near
future.
The required amount of the budget will mainly go to the construction of
hydroelectric power plants, power transformation lines and for other
electric power related infrastructures.
News Dire
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