Foreign currency shortage in Zimbabwe had an impact on Econet Wireless Zimbabwe Limited‘s investment in infrastructure in 2021.
Chairman of the Econet Board James Myers said reduced investment in infrastructure continues to have an adverse effect on the customer experience.
“Investment in infrastructure over the years has been on a downward trend as a result of acute foreign currency shortages in the country,” Myers said.
“The business has been investing an average of 5% of revenue compared to other telecommunication peers in the region whose average annual capital investment is over 15% of revenue.”
Foreign currency shortages are among other challenges that Econet faced in 2021.
Chief Executive Officer Douglas Mboweni said, “Our core operational costs from infrastructure and software upgrades require foreign currency and the runaway inflation and exchange rate resulted in the company’s operational costs rising steeply.”
“Network availability continued to be negatively affected by persistent national grid power outages, exacerbated by increased cases of vandalism and theft at our telecom tower sites.”
“Whilst the business has accelerated the installation of solar power solutions to mitigate network outages, importation of spare parts continued to put additional pressure to the already scarce foreign currency availability.”
Econet registered a ZWL$ 87.3 billion in revenue in the company’s 2022 financial year, a 51% increase from the ZWL$57.9 billion revenue attained in 2021.
The company also registered a ZWL$ 12.3 billion net profit in 2022, an 1130% from the 1.0 billion attained in 2021.
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