Zimbabwe: New law fails to weaken demand for electricity generators

The decision had initially set panic among generator owners after reports of the new measures swirled in the capital, prompting huge enquiries at the Zimbabwe Electricity Regulatory Authority (ZERC).

A new legal instrument gazetted at the start of August now makes it mandatory that all owners of electricity generators register the generators with ZERC, failure of which an offending owner could be fined or jailed for up to six months.

A ZERC official said owners of generators used for domestic purposes needed to simply inform ZERC about ownership of their generators.

“You just need to fill in a form and you don't pay anything. It's the industrial generators that will have to pay fees to ZERC for use of the generators,” the official said.

However, the statutory instrument says there will be a levy of US$5 for verification and US$20 for safety inspection.

Many people were seen at the ZERC offices to make enquiries about the latest developments on Thursday.

According to the statutory instrument, people or organisations currently using electricity generators have up to the end of November to notify ZERC about their generators and fully comply with the new law.

Those owning generators with a capacity of less than 100kw will simply have to register their generators, while those with generators with a capacity of over 100kw, either combined or from a single generator, will need to be licensed by ZERC, paying over US$100 in levies.

Generator distributors said buyers were inevitably interested in finding out how they would be affected by the new legislation, but that had in fact not affected sales.

“I have sold out all my stock and am expecting new deliveries from South Africa on Monday,” a sales representative with Mobile City, one of the biggest generator distributors, said, preferring not to be named.

Other generators dealers said sales had gone up during the last few weeks, insisting this had been helped by the increasing frequency of power blackouts since April this year.

“The new law had had no effect. Sales continue to soar,” a marketing executive with SDEC Zimbabwe, which distributes SDEC, Cummins and Lombardi generators, said.