By Musa Adamu
In its bid to rid the sector of challenge of revenue loss, The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) has ordered electricity distribution companies to intensify efforts towards enumerating customers within six (6) months.
This, it said would position the companies well towards revenue generation in the industry.
The commission said it had discovered that of 6 million customers on the data base of the electricity distribution companies (DisCos) only a fraction pay for consuming power while most get subsidised by this fraction.
Speaking at a workshop organized by the team of Power Sector Recovery Program (PSRP), Vice Chairman, NERC, Sanusi Garba, said the exercise would both relieve the fraction who subsidised the majority as well as move this majority from being power consumers to power customers.
Garba provided insight into some of the challenges in the industry NERC was battling with at the moment.
He said challenges such recurring deficits in the sector, where about N400bn was lost in 2015/2016, discrepancies between tariff assumptions and reality, ineffective contract based market, lack of credit worthiness utilities and absence of tariff setting methodology had made the need for market rest imperative.
To overcome these challenges, Sanusi disclosed some of the action plans of the commission to include creation of a financially viable market, effective compliance monitoring, corporate governance regulation, recapitalization if utilities and sustained incremental growth in supply.
According to him, other action plans are enhancement if security of supply and increasing access.
Disclosing the federal government commitment to the PSRP, Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said government commitment to the PSRP was evidence based.
To this end, he said government had paid about N 6billion MDAs debt to the DisCos, signed contract for Mambillia Hydro project, and that was CBN providing loan to solve commercial challenge.
He described PSRP as a guiding map for the government, saying it also serve as meter for measuring the commitment of the government.
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