Oscarline Onwuemenyi
24 May 2017, Sweetcrude, Abuja – Electricity generation companies have lamented that the Federal government’s refusal to denominate gas prices in Naira has negatively affected their operations in the face of challenges in getting foreign currency.
This and many issues were the focus of a communique at the end of an interactive forum organised by the Market Operator, an arm of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), and other stakeholders in the nation’s power sector to identify measures to reduce the challenges inherent in the power sector.
The communique, which was issued in Abuja was jointly signed by Mr. Sola Adeyegbe of Ibadan Generating Company, Mr. Kabiru Adamu of TCN and Emeka Akpara of Omotosho Electric Power Plc.
It disclosed that electricity generating companies, popularly called Gencos, have the capacity to generate 8,500MW of electricity for the country, but have been hamstrung by inefficient transmission and distribution system as well as gas pricing in dollars which has affected their operations.
The Gencos also called for an improvement in transmission and distribution capacity to accommodate their envisaged generation.
According to the communique, the Gencos also called for centralisation of market collection and appropriate disbursement based on the agreed percentages.
“The Gencos and Service Providers have called for the declaration of eligible customers in the nation’s power sector. They also advocated for the denomination of gas price in Naira with the Distribution companies (Discos) calling for harmonisation of currency for all transactions in the market.”
It stated that the Gencos also demanded the payment mechanism for their outstanding N504 billion owned it by the sector players.
According to the communique, the Discos advocate for the implementation of the last tariff review.
The Discos called for immediate payment of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) outstanding debts to improve liquidity in the market.
It further said that the Discos made case for provision of subsidy in the market to support the purchase of power from the Gencos.
According to the communique, the service providers recommended the formation of a metering company to manage both trading and consumers metering to ensure standards and efficient deployment of meters in the industry.
It further noted that the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (NBET) should be empowered to fulfill its mandate of bridging the revenue shortfall in the electricity market.
It resolved that the Transmission Service Provider (TSP) should have a clear service level agreements with Discos and Gencos for effective service delivery.
The Market Operator and Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) should be mandated to enforce full compliance with the market rules and sanction the noncompliance by defaulting stakeholders.