23/09/2025
Power Trading Is Not Illegal – Minister of Energy
Minister of Energy Makozo Chikote has castigated politicians who are on a campaign of attacking independent power traders in the electricity sector, insisting that private power traders operate within the parameters of the law.
Appearing on Diamond TV’s COSTA program on Sunday night, Mr. Chikote called out some opposition parliamentarians, whom he named, for deliberately misinforming the public on the role and status of private power traders in the electricity market.
“These are the results of the reforms our government is making in the electricity industry. You heard the President inviting those same politicians to invest in the sector because we now have open access, which has attracted investors, including the independent power traders.”
He explained that the power traders, including Kanona, GreenCo Services, and Enterprise Power were all regulated by the Energy Regulation Board and operated within the parameters of the law. He said Copperbelt Energy Corporation, the longstanding company that supplies power to the mines in the Copperbelt, is also a power trader, which exports power to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Energy Minister commended the traders for supporting Zesco with imports during the crisis because the national power utility does not have the financial capacity to bring in the volumes of electricity needed to sustain the demand.
“The independent power traders buy power from the region and supply it to customers locally. They can also export power to customers outside Zambia. They don’t get that power from Zesco,” he explained.
He strongly dismissed assertions that Zesco buys expensive power imported by the independent traders from the same sources that Zesco can buy from. He emphatically stated that contrary to those untrue statements, the power utility imports power itself directly from the national utilities of Mozambique (EDM), Zimbabwe (ZESA), and South Africa (Eskom) or from the Southern African Power Pool.
He said because of its bad credit history, which the UPND has been working to help it resolve, ZESCO has to pay for the power imports upfront and does not get anything on credit.
By 2021, Zesco was said to have owed every utility in the region. Its debt stood at $1.8 billion but is now down to about $260 million.
