The Sudanese government is moving toward opening its state-run electrical power industry to private investors, including those from abroad, newspapers reported Thursday.
A cabinet body passed a draft law Wednesday allowing national and foreign investors to enter the business of generating and distributing electricity, a business which has hitherto been a government monopoly.
The proposal submitted by Energy and Mining Minister Awad Ahmed al-Jaz was passed by the cabinet's economic council in a meeting chaired by Finance Minister Mohamed Khair al-Zubair.
It has to be approved by the full cabinet to be enacted.
Under the terms of the law, interested Sudanese and foreign investors can build power stations and use the national grid, which will remain under government ownership, to distribute the electricity produced.
Sudan has long suffered from shortages in electricity which is generated at Er-Roseiris and Sennar dams on the Blue Nile in central Sudan and at thermal power stations in the capital Khartoum. – (AFP)
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
