KENYA . FINANCE
A group of financial institutions is to put up $250 million to support the recovery of Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC).
Energy minister Achilo Ayacko said “We approached and have held discussions with our development partners, including the World Bank, EIB, AFD of France, the Nordic Fund for Development, and other bilateral agencies. We have received a commitment of $250 million to finance the recovery of KPLC and the energy sector in general.” He also said that although the government undertook to inject about $100 million into KPLC, the company needed $250 million to improve the current poor quality of power supply. At present, the country experiences 11 000 outages per month, in addition to a high rate of voltage fluctuations.
The money will be used to expand KPLC’s consumer base by connecting at least 150 000 new users every year, and reducing system losses from 20% currently to 15% by 2006. KPLC needs technical assistance to deal with critical issues of system voltage stability and loss reduction.