eBusiness Weekly
Martin Kadzere
Zimbabwe’s coal miners are battling to meet demand as producers of the fossil fuel used for power generation are struggling to get enough diesel, an industry official said.
Zimbabwe is experiencing a serious shortage of foreign currency and is struggling to pay for essential imports including fuel, wheat, drugs and electricity.
Average weekly output has gone down by about 50 percent while normal mining cycles involving extraction and development on new pits have been badly affected, chairman of Coal Producers Association Ray Mutokonyi told Business Weekly.
Zimbabwe has three coal producers—Makono Resources, the largest in terms of output, Hwange Colliery Company and Zambezi Gas—supplying a combined 80 percent of their output to Zimbabwe Power Company, a production unit of Zesa Holdings.
“We do have other challenges but diesel shortages is the biggest challenge,” Mutokonyi, who is also a director at Makomo Resources said.
“On average, we need about 1,5 million litres (of diesel) per week but we are getting slightly below half.”
Producers were mainly concentrating with mining at the existing pits while development of new ones have been put on hold.
This will affect mining cycles in future, he argued.
“This may affect supplies to the power stations.
“Already, we are rarely meeting daily demand,” said Mutokonyi, adding that out of 6 000 tonnes of coal required daily, the miners were only able to supplying about 60 percent of that. Only 20 percent of coal mined by local companies find its way to other the sectors such as manufacturing, whose capacity utilisation remains subdued, said Mutokonyi.
