"There's been significant interest in this," CIC President Greg Kinross said in an interview this week from Johannesburg, without naming the companies.

"If you name the major mining companies, they're all in there and there are also significant independent power producers."

CIC, based in Toronto, will in the next two weeks request proposals from financial advisers to help it complete talks with Botswana's government on the 3 600-megawatt plant and coal mine, arrange debt and secure a power-sale agreement with Eskom Holdings, South Africa's state-owned utility, he added.

Kinross plans to take advantage of electricity shortages in neighbouring South Africa by developing Botswana's largest coal field and selling the power across the border to Eskom.

South Africa miscalculated by two years the time when rising demand would exceed existing power supply as growth in Africa's biggest economy accelerated to a 21-year high in 2005.

Eskom plans to spend R84 billion over five years reopening mothballed power plants and building new ones.

It will also buy power from its neighbours, most of which are building new generation capacity.

CIC listed its shares in Toronto on March 23, after raising C$53 million to fund a feasibility study for the Botswana project.

South Africa's Absa Group, a unit of Barclays, US-based engineering company Black and Veatch and South Africa's Snowden Mining Consultants are advising CIC on the study.

The study and agreements to sell power to Johannesburg-based Eskom will be complete by the end of the year, Kinross said.

The company plans a phased start-up of the plant by 2011, he added.

Low-quality coal will be burned in the power station while higher-quality coal may be exported through Namibia, he added.

-Bloomberg

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