Tanzania, Zambia and Kenya have jointly kicked off their envisaged electricity trade project by agreeing to hire a consortium of consultants.

Local media on Monday quoted Tanzanian Energy Minister Ibrahim Msabaha as saying that the three countries had received 800,000 U. S. dollars for hiring consultants from South Africa and Britain.

The consortium of consultants are expected to act as transaction advisors that will be required to provide financial, technical and legal advisory services.

The tripartite electricity trade project, known as the Zambia- Tanzania-Kenya Power Interconnection Project, is planned to be developed in two phases at a projected cost of 660 million dollars.

The first phase, to cost 358 million dollars, is scheduled to start in late 2007 and to complete in 2009 and will build a transfer capacity of 200 megawatts of electricity.

Phase two of the project, according to the minister who has just come back from a tripartite ministerial meeting in Mombasa of Kenya over the weekend, is to cost 302 million dollars for another transfer capacity of 400 megawatts upon completion in 2014.

Source: Xinhua