Mary Goretti Kitutu, the Minister for Energy and Mineral Development
Government is in advanced stages to secure US$400 million (1.46 trillion) from the World Bank to support the electricity connections policy.
The revelation was made by Mary Goretti Kitutu, the Minister for Energy and Mineral Development while presenting a statement on the electricity connections policy on the floor of Parliament today.
The Policy aims at achieving 60% level of access to grid electricity by 2027. Currently electricity access is estimated at about 23% of Ugfanda’s population.
“These funds will be available beginning of fiscal year 2022/23 for a period of 5 years,” Minister Kitutu said.
The 10-year policy targets to connect 300, 000 people annually.
The Minister revealed that besides the backlog of 200,000 electricity connections, Government was in arrears for connections made by service providers amounting to shs103.4 billion.
“As an interim measure, Government opened up the implementation of the electricity connections policy from December 2020 to allow consumers that were willing to pay for their connections to be connected in a timely manner,” she said, adding: “The high number of applications for new connections required a high budget provision which was a challenge given the COVID-19 conditions with many competing demands and this caused a delay in making new connections.”
She explained that the backlog of electricity connections due to funds constraints by the end of July 2020 stood at about 200,000 of completed applications.
She further revealed that Government has released shs42 billion towards implementation of electricity connections policy.
“Government has imported connection materials worth 87,000 no pole connections financed by the African Development Bank to resume the no pole connections,” she said.
She noted that Shs27.8bn has been allocated to partly pay for the already made connections by Umeme Ltd and the rest Shs14.2bn to UEDC LTD and small service providers to partly pay for already made connections and commence new ones in March.
