Communication - Presse

Cahora Bassa Makes Record Profit in 2024 Despite Low Water Level

In a statement sent to Lusa, the management of HCB, one of the largest independent hydroelectric power producers in the southern African region, said that last year, it achieved a total production of 15,753.52 GigaWatt-hours (GWh).

“This figure was achieved in an adverse hydro-climatological context characterised by a severe drought imposed by the occurrence of the El Niño phenomenon, whose negative impact led to the adoption and implementation of management measures for the operation of the reservoir aimed at safeguarding the hydraulic-operational safety of the dam and related infrastructures, which allowed Cahora Bassa to have better water storage levels than the dams of upstream countries,” the statement reads.

The document added that on 31 December 2024, at the end of the first period of the 2024/2025 rainy season, the reservoir level reached 305.20 metres above the average sea level, corresponding to 21.19% of useful storage.

However, current forecasts predict a La Niña phenomenon this year, “with a high probability of normal rainfall in this region, particularly in the Zambezi Basin.”

“Associated with the hydrological management measures, which included the suspension of any discharge for the whole of 2024, HCB hopes to recover, by the end of 2025, the level of storage that will allow it to achieve hydro-energy production with the potential to meet the needs of the country and the region, in the current and subsequent years,” the statement emphasised.

Quoted in the document, the chairman of the company’s board of directors, Tomás Matola, says that “despite the hydro-climatological constraints” and “as a corollary of careful management of the company’s resources, based on principles of austerity and maximisation of financial gains”, the current data, which is still being audited, indicates that “the 2024 performance could generate net profits of more than $225 million, figures that exceed the records for the 2023 financial year and for the entire history of HCB”.

Based on this performance, Tomás Matola estimates that HCB will pay the Mozambican state around $292 million (€279.5 million) in taxes, fees, and dividends in 2025, “which demonstrates the company’s structuring and strategic role “in the country’s development and in improving the living conditions of Mozambicans.

The Mozambican state holds 90% of HCB’s share capital since the reversion to Mozambique, agreed with Portugal in 2007, while the Portuguese company Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN) has a share of 7.5% and Eletricidade de Moçambique 2.5%.

The Cahora Bassa reservoir is the fourth largest in Africa, with a maximum length of 270 kilometres and 30 kilometres between banks, occupying 2,700 square kilometres and an average depth of 26 metres, with almost 800 employees.

The company also emphasised that, for the first time in its history, it did not record any accidents at work in 2024.

 

360mozambique.com/oil-gas/energy/cahora-bassa-makes-record-profit-in-2024-despite-low-water-level/

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