Cape Verde’s Deputy Prime Minister, Olavo Correia, announced a financing agreement with the Bank of Austria for 10 million euros to install a desalination plant on the island of Boa Vista.
Representing the Government, I signed, with the Bank of Austria, a financing agreement in the amount of 10 million Euros for the purchase of a desalination plant with a production capacity of 5.000 cubic meters per day, to meet the needs of the island of Boa Vista”, announced ,Olavo Correia who is also the Minister of Finance.
The governor also explained that this production “aims to meet the demand of the island”, the second most touristic of the archipelago, to “ensure the dynamics of the tourism sector, as well as to meet the needs of the population”.
“This credit is concessional, at a zero interest rate, which will help the Government to have more room to use the credit itself,” he also said.
In view of the successive droughts in the archipelago, the Government has been trying to diversify the sources of drinking water, namely through drip irrigation in agriculture and desalination plants for human consumption.
In 2021, the government had already announced that the Palmarejo desalination plant in the city of Praia, the largest in the country, would increase its production capacity by 5,000 cubic meters of water per day starting in March, in an investment also funded by Austria in 5.5 million euros.
According to an announcement made in February last year by the Cape Verdean government, the assembly works for the new desalination unit at the Palmarejo plant, operated by the public company Electra, were underway, to “start injecting water into the network in late March.”
“Electra thus sees its installed capacity increased by 33%, to a total available of 20,000 cubic meters of water per day,” through the plant in the Cape Verdean capital, the same information states.
Besides some neighborhoods in Praia, the new unit, installed by the Austrians of UNIHA Wasser Technologie, would allow to reinforce the supply of drinking water, obtained from sea water, to the municipalities of São Domingos and São Lourenço dos Órgãos.
This is a public investment financed by Unicredit Bank Austria AG with 5.450 million euros, according to an agreement signed in February 2020 with the Cape Verdean government, aiming at “the design, production, delivery and installation of electromechanical equipment of the Palmarejo Desalination Plant”.
In Cape Verde, desalination has been used for more than 50 years and this investment comes at a time when the country is recovering after four consecutive years of drought. In this scenario, the government decreed, in January 2020, a water emergency situation, with limitations on water consumption, and approved a mitigation plan, which includes strengthening the seawater treatment capacity.
