The Deputy Prime Minister of Cape Verde, Olavo Correia, announced this Tuesday a financing agreement with the Bank of Austria, worth 10 million euros, to install a desalination plant on the island of Boa Vista.
Austria finances a desalination plant on the Cape Verdean island of Boa Vista with 10 ME
“On behalf of 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 finance minister.
The minister also explained that this production “aims to meet the demand of the island”, the second most touristic in 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 zero interest rate, which will help the Government to have more space for using its own credit”, he added.
In view of successive droughts in the archipelago, the Government has been seeking 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 daily starting in March, in an investment also financed by Austria. at 5.5 million euros.
According to an announcement made in February last year by the Cape Verdean government, the assembly work on the new desalination unit at the Palmarejo plant, operated by the public company Electra, was under way, to “start injecting water into the network at the end of of March”.
“Electra thus sees an increase in installed capacity by 33%, reaching a total available of 20,000 cubic meters of water daily”, through the plant in the Cape Verdean capital, refers in the same information.
In addition to some neighborhoods in Praia, the new unit, installed by the Austrians from UNIHA Wasser Technologie, would make it possible 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, aimed at “the design, production, delivery and installation of electromechanical equipment for the Desalination Plant do Palmarejo”.
In Cape Verde, desalination has been used for over 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 declared, in January 2020, a water emergency situation, with limitations on water consumption, and approved a mitigation plan, which involves precisely strengthening seawater treatment capacity.
