Central African Republic

Getting Electricity in

Central African Republic

Listed below are the procedures, time and cost required for a business to obtain an electricity connection for a newly constructed building.

The information appearing on this page was collected as part of the Doing Business project, which measures and compares regulations relevant to the life cycle of a small- to medium-sized domestic business in 183 economies. The most recent round of data collection for the project was completed in June 2011.

  • Name of Utility: Enerca
  • City: Bangui

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No. Procedure Time to Complete Associated Costs
1 Submit application to Energie Centrafricaine (ENERCA) and await estimate

The following documents must be provided for the application: Ownership document (notarized), ID (not notarized), "Cahier des charges" (what type of appliances will be used in this warehouse). The documents will allow ENERCA to determine if the voltage requested is indeed the correct one, or if it should be downgraded. There are no online forms. However, if a person sends an email, with the correct attachments, it is considered a valid opening of the application as well. Once the estimate is prepared, ENERCA will call the customer to ask him to come in and sign the contract and pay for the connection in advance.
In order to prepare the estimate, ENERCA will send engineers to the location of the property to verify that there is indeed the necessary transformer station at this location to supply the requested voltage. It is recommended that someone from BuildCo is present for this inspection, but it is not mandatory.
Once the engineer is back from the field, an estimate for the work will to be accomplished.

Agency: Energie Centrafricaine (ENERCA) 		14 calendar days XAF 6,090.0
* 2 Energie Centrafricaine (ENERCA) inspects the site

ENERCA will send an engineer to the location of the property to do a technical study and to verify what kind of connection works need to be done.

Agency: Energie Centrafricaine (ENERCA) 		1 calendar day no charge
3 Develop a work plan with Energie Centrafricaine (ENERCA) for the external connection works

A plan of the external connection works will be established between ENERCA and the customer . The customer is going to ENERCA to work out the work plan with the responsible engineer.

Agency: Customer/electrical contractor 		1 calendar day XAF 25,000.0
4 Hire an electrical contractor to build the transformer post

For every connection over 50 KVA, a transformer has to be built to pass from the low tension to the medium tension. The customer hires an electrical contractor to purchase the material and to build the transformer station. Once the material has been bought, the customer or the electrical contractor calls ENERCA and brings the material for a control to check if the material is in line with the technical recommendation of ENERCA that were specified in the estimate. The installation works of the transformer station are done under the supervision of the utility.

Agency: Electrical Contractor 		65 calendar days XAF 24,386,950.0
5 Obtain external connection works from Energie Centrafricaine (ENERCA) and obtain test to ascertain that the external and internal connection work together

The utility is installing some equipment in the transformer station and connecting the transformer station to the network. The material needed for the connection is usually provided by ENERCA, but it depends on availability of material and can be bought by the customer. After the external connection works, the utility will do a test to verify that there are no faulty wiring that will cause problems for ENERCA’s network (“Une mise sous tension”), however this is not an inspection of the internal wiring of the warehouse as ENERCA is not allowed to verify this.

Agency: Energie Centrafricaine (ENERCA) 		16 calendar days XAF 2,632,170.0
6 Conclude contract with Energie Centrafricaine (ENERCA) and pay meter deposit, receive meter installation and connection to electricity

The customer has to conclude a supply contract with the commercial department of ENERCA and pay the meter deposit. The meter is installed after the deposit has been paid. The deposit is returned at the end of the contract.

Agency: Energie Centrafricaine (ENERCA) 		6 calendar days XAF 1,326,950.6
* Takes place simultaneously with another procedure.
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