UMEME has unveiled a capital investment programme worth Ugx 310 billion for 2020 after the approval by regulator towards the efficiency of the operations.
While addressing the media on Monday, the Managing Director,Celestino Babungi,noted that part of their larger investment agenda is to help Uganda address the increasing demand, reliability of supply and driving efficiencies.
This will also help in converting post paid customers to prepaid system,load growth and demand, power generation and evacuation net work system,automaton and network work projection and security.
The multi billion shillings investment has also factored in the progress of 600 mega warts in Karuma power project which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2021.
“A hundred billion of this will go on efficiencies of our operations including converting 220,000 post paid customers to prepayment and as I speak we have so far added 80,000 of those who have already been converted now. We are remaining with 140,000 to ensure that everyone is on prepaid by the end of the year,”he explained.
He said a lot of efforts are being put towards technological investments as the number of transformer zones ,sub stations and customers have greatly increased keep on growing
He explained that the sector has been greatly affected by the pandemic leading to the drop in the power demand with the low sales, in the month of April and May.
He said that before the COVID-19,the power distribution body used to sell 9.5gw of power per day and this dropped in March to 9.1gw and later to 6.5gw per day.
Babungi explained that this was expected because of the closure of industries ,SMEs and people were working from home reflecting a reduction of 29% in power demand.
He however expressed hope that with the phased easing of the lockdown restrictions the company is able to experience increase in sales as the businesses resume.
