History
In May 2010, Umeme's communications director Charlotte Kemigyisha wrote a commentary in the Daily Monitor newspaper urging public support for President Yoweri Museveni's proposal to make electricity theft a capital offense.[45]
In December 2010, Umeme announced plans to invest US$32 million during 2011 in new substations, improvements in grid connectivity, and the introduction of pre-payment systems.[46]
In November 2013, Umeme announced that it had secured loans totaling US$190 million from the International Finance Corporation, Standard Chartered Bank, and Stanbic Bank to fund grid expansion and reduce energy losses.[47]
Umeme spent US$440 million between 2013 and 2018 to overhaul equipment, buy technology, and add distribution points.[48]
In March 2016, the Daily Monitor reported that Umeme had signed a contract with the Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited to distribute the power generated from the Isimba Hydroelectric Power Station, due online in 2018, and the Karuma Hydroelectric Power Station, due online in 2020.[49]
In September 2016, a senior Umeme executive said that the company planned to spend US$2 billion over the next five years to expand the grid and increase access rates from an estimated 20 percent in 2016 (about 900,000 subscribers) to 40 percent in 2020 (about 3 million subscribers).[50] In December 2017, Umeme announced plans to invest US$155 million in 2018, to improve the distribution network, build new substations and refurbish old networks across Uganda.[51] In May 2018, in an interview with Reuters, Celestino Babungi, the CEO of Umeme, announced that the company planned to raise US$1.2 billion to revamp and expand the national distribution grid over the next seven years. A consultant was hired to advise and guide on how to raise the funds.[52]
In June 2019, the Daily Monitor reported that Umeme planned to borrow US$70 million from the International Finance Corporation to add to the US$255 million raised internally, in order to invest in network upgrades and expansion while reducing network losses along with increased collection targets during the 2019–2024 time frame.[53]
In December 2019, Umeme received a syndicated loan of US$70 million from four financial institutions as laid down in the table below. A portion of the loan will be utilized to set up distribution systems to effectively distribute power from Isimba and Karuma. Part of the loan will also support extension of power to industrial parks, upgrading Umeme's network, building the backbone on which more electricity connections will be supplied, accelerate prepayment metering and reduce energy losses. Two hundred and thirty thousand customers out of the 1.4 million customers that Umeme services, as of December 2019, are in the process of being converted from post-service billing to pre-paid metering. At that time, total energy losses stood at 16.7 percent, of which 11.7 percent were technical and 5 percent were commercial.[54] As of December 2023, Umeme reported system losses of 16.2 percent, the lowest in the 20 years of the concession.[2]
