Eligible Customer Policy still our greatest fear -AEDC Investor

By Etuka Sunday

The Managing Director, Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) Africa, the core investor in AEDC, Engr. Emmanuel Katepa has disclosed that the Eligible Customer Policy of the Federal Government remains the greatest threat to his power company business in Nigeria.
Speaking to Peoples Daily in an exclusive chart, Engr. Katepa expressed fear that the policy may not be well implemented, suggesting that such commercialarrangement out to have been made in such a way that the loss of business to the disco for it has to be accounted for, such that the disco is compensated whatever it would have made off that person.
”The funny thing is that almost all of those declarations yield purely objectively and managed objectively as well are actually things that can help the sector. Eligible customer effectively is establishing customer mission based on ability so if you look at that regulation in its original context, this eligible customer can only decide on extra electricity generation of which power has to be made available to the customers.
“The Loss of business to the disco for this has to be accounted for in that commercial arrangement such that the disco is compensated whatever it would have made off that person. If it’s a customer who is going to be connected through the distribution network, there would still be a distribution use of system charge”, he said.
Engr. Katepa saidthe company has improved its revenue collection to N5.9 billion in March 2018, saying that as at last year, the monthly collection was at N4.5 billion.
According to him, AEDC installed 120,000 meters in 2017 and is doing another 30,000 units. “Prior to the Meter Assets Providers (MAP) Regulation, we had engaged PWC firm on a contract for 400,000 Small Power Users (SPU) meter installation within the next two years. We have consulted NERC on that after MAP came, and they have given us some feed back towards it,” Katepa said.