Some Discos are yet to pay for electricity supply them in 2015 – NBET

As a result of the downtrend in the economy, most electricity distribution companies, National Daily gathered had failed to make full remittances in recent months to government-owned Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc for the energy supplied to them.

It was gathered that the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc carries out bulk purchase of power from Gencos and resell to Discos through contracts which the Distribution Companies have failed to meet in recent times.

According to a top executive in one of the Discos, majority of the power investors were only using the intervention fund they got from the Central Bank of Nigeria for the investment they are making.

He said, “We are supposed to bring money either from our investment or banks for capital expenditure. But what people are doing now is to reduce what they are supposed to pay to NBET and divert it to do CAPEX, thus depriving the market of funds.

“Under normal circumstances, we are supposed to pay 100 per cent of the bills for energy given to us. Before the privatisation, some people were paying 50 per cent, but now they have reduced it to 40 to 45 per cent.”

Until recently, power supply in the country was hovering around 3,600 megawatts. It stood at 4,143.87MW on December 28, latest data from the Federal Ministry of Power showed on Thursday.

Recall that the Federal Government had announced in September 2014 a N213bn intervention fund, later suspended in 2015 because of certain conditions precedent that was not meet by the Discos, to be disbursed by the CBN to the power firms.

The fund was meant to be used for the settlement of legacy gas debts, execution of agreed metering programmes; procurement of transformers by distribution companies; execution of maintenance programmes; and procurement of equipment by generation companies.