Electricity generating companies in the country are being owed about N1.7 trillion, since 2013. The Executive Secretary, Association of Power Generation Companies, Dr. Joy Ogaji, has said.
Dr. Joy Ogaji who spoke during a panel session at the Association of Energy Correspondents of Nigeria (NAEC) Strategic International Conference in Lagos, stated that liquidity challenge has made operation in the generating value chain difficult for companies.
According to her, GenCos currently owe their gas suppliers about N1 trillion and also servicing loans used for the acquisition of the companies in 2013.
She said the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Company (NBET) needs to intensify efforts to ensure remittances by the 11 electricity Distribution Companies for energy consumed by their customers.
“We are ready to generate the power needed in Nigeria, but utilisation had been stagnated in the country for a long time due to transmission and distribution constraints.”
“Just to give you a context, on Nov.1, 2013, when the privatisation took place, power was 3,427MW on the day of takeover. On Dec. 1, 2013, power had gone from 3,427MW to over 4,003MW and by 2020 it had gone up to nearly 8,000MW,” she said.
She lamented that the average uptake of power from the GenCos was about 4,000MWh from 2013 till date which was not good for business.
This she stated does not encourage any investor to keep investing because clearly, it shows that your product is not needed.
She said when demand is not moving in line with the production, the producer is not incentivised to produce and this is a major problem.
Another big challenge facing the companies she said is lack of access to foreign exchange. This she stated further has constrained the operations of the companies in recent times.
