JIRAMA: big reforms well looming up, but still struggling to materialize, are they not?

The Energy Management Department simply has no plan for the JIRAMA, and has to wait for the World Bank’s assessment and report. By and large, any decent governance of the energy supply sector calls the country’s current leaders upon making a step forward in making strategic and final choices, expected to materialize into a definite plan potentially attractive to investors, and upon sticking to transparency in the implementation process. Already, the IMF calls for urgent reforms including putting fuel subsidies to a halt. Desire Rasidy, the JIRAMA’s CEO declared that the water and electricity supply company could little more than increasing consumer prices when oil supply companies do. The Energy Minister Richard Fienena addressed the option of turning the JIRAMA into a genuine commercial business providing and trading water and electricity. A thorough privatization process was not forcibly his understanding though.
As for Saminirina Andriambelosoa, energy supply specialist for the local economy research center (CREAM), his most viable option would be a long term strategic framework for energy management policy: “turning away from diesel power plants, then boosting the local electricity production levels by collecting funds and building hydropower plants on production sites already identified by the Department of Energy and told to bear the outstanding potential of more than 20 times the current electricity supply level;… or eventually building on thermal power plants fed with coal from Sakoa. All of these investments would lead to a significant and long term drop of energy, namely electric power costs.”
President Hery Rajaonarimampianina indeed promised “major investments in long term hydropower production” actually in response to one of the private sector’s required measures expected to settle the energy costs related issue. The most suitable midterm solution would consist into the development of a cluster of hydroelectric plants independently producing small quantities, not more than 10 to 20 MW. Large areas would eventually get efficiently covered, and expenses for supply networks connections or transmission facilities dropped.
“Oil supplies from Tsimiroro saves consumer prices from rises, and would eventually bring them to drop” formally declared Minister Fienena. This solution however happens to be everything but ultimate since merely Antananarivo, Antsiranana, Toamasina and Toliara have thermal power plants technically able to run with this type of unrefined fuel.
In 2010, access to electricity supply in Madagascar was rated at 15%, but 20.3% in 2003. The JIRAMA’s number of subscribers comes up to around 480,000 according to the company’s own assessments. Between 2010 and 2012, the company receives an average of 16,000 new subscriptions a year, in other terms 3.5% perfectly complying with a plus 4.5% electricity production rise. In 2013, production levels exceeded 1.4 million of megawatts, and recorded a plus 5% rise.