The Mozambican government has spent US$530 million over the last five years on rural electrification, the country’s Energy Minister, Salvador Namburete said Tuesday in Maputo.

At the end of a meeting of the Council of Ministers, Namburete said that the number of district capitals with access to electricity had risen from 51 in 2004 to 121 at the moment, of a total of 128 districts.

In the last five years, he added, 7.500 kilometres of power transmission lines had been laid, of which 1,471 were high voltage, 5,375 were medium voltage and 1,000 were low voltage.

Namburete said that in 2004 just 7 percent of the population had access to electricity, compared to 40 percent at the moment, or 1.3 million people in 2004 and 10.2 million now. Of the current total 6.5 million people have access to electricity from the national grid and 3.7 million form solar panels.

“So that the other 60 percent of the population can have access to electricity the country will need to spend over US$2.4 billion,” said the Energy Minister. (macauhub/MZ)