By Adewale Sanyaolu
The Federal Government and the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) are to provide N1.325 trillion billion towards the funding of the Presidential Metering Initiative (PMI).
The PMI is an intervention project of the Federal Government aimed at closing the over seven million metering gap over a four to five year period.
Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu, disclosed this during a facility tour of the Famadec Group in Lagos, Monday.
Given a further breakdown of the funding structure, Adelabu said the Federal Government would provide a seed capital of about N75 billion in addition to debt funding from various financial institutions into the PMI while the NSIA will provide at least N250 annually over the next four to five years to enable the sector fund the meter acquisition plan.
‘‘And the target that we have is that within four to five years, we should close the metering gap, which means that a minimum of two million meters must be installed annually under the PMI, for which it has also established a Presidential Metering Council (PMC) of which I am the Chairman with other major stakeholders represented, including the Senior Advisor to the President on Energy and some private sector players,’’ he said.
According to the Minister, Nigeria faces a significant shortfall of over seven million electricity meter to homes and businesses.
This, he said, has resulted in challenges such as; estimated billing, revenue losses and consumer dissatisfaction.
The Minister lamented that after visiting several meter manufacturing plants,he observed that they had limited capacity.
This, he argued was not their fault but rather due to lack of sufficient patronage for them to expand, expressing confidence that once they are patronized, their capacity would expand and subsequently close the metering gap.
“And after closing the gap, I believe the local manufacturers will basically service the remanants of gaps that would be left going forward because as they are closing these gaps, there would still be new connections that will need to be made, and a lot of these meters after 10 years get obsolete which will need to be replaced. So, there is a huge market for local manufacturers,’’.
The Minister admitted there was the need to have a mix of both imported and local meters to meet the metering needs of Nigerians.
Adelabu stressed that while local manufacturers are growing capacity, imported meters will be there to meet the immediate demands because the country cannot afford to have a vacuum in the meter procurement value chain, warning that, such would create more problems for the industry.
The Chief Executive Officer of Famedec Group, Mr. Fola Akinola, said the suspension of meter installation by Discos was as a result of pricing issues which is already receiving attention.
He explained that Discos had to close their portals when it became impossible for local meter manufacturers to continue to supply the product as the old price due to exchange rate fluctuations.