Fashola advocates dilution of power firms’ equity

From Dennis Mernyi, Abuja

THE Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Mr. Babatunde Fashola, has ad­vised owners of power as­sets, especially in the distri­bution arm of the electricity value chain, to embrace new commercial behaviour suit­able for operating optimally in the new commercial envi­ronment of the power sector.

Fashola made the remark in Abuja while receiving a delegation from the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) led by its Vice Chairman, Mrs. Sola David- Borha. He said power asset owners should be ready to bring in more funds by of­fering to dilute their stakes in exchange for sorely need­ed inputs like meters, trans­formers and other equip­ment required for systems upgrade, insisting that it would make more business sense to give up some shares in exchange for funds and capital.

The Minister hinted that if this advice is acceded to, it will make for redistribu­tion of their risk assets in exchange for equipment and capacity to drastically reduce the prevailing high occurrences of commercial and technical losses.

He further reminded the power asset owners that the success of the privatisa­tion exercise of the sector solely rests on the distribu­tion end in the value-chain hence, urging them to step up their collections to meet the time-lines agreed with government for all parties to respect agreements and take full responsibility for their actions.

The Minister commended the leadership of NESG for expressing the group’s will­ingness to partner with his Ministry in proffering solu­tions through constant en­gagements with the NESG/ Private Sector-led economic think-tank working on the three main sectors under his purview, which are criti­cal areas of growth and de­velopment in the nation’s economy.

He said that governments exist because of the private sector’s large segments of people, from the unem­ployed to the big corpora­tions, while enjoining distri­bution companies to brace up in overcoming some of the challenges currently faced by the sector.

Fashola also reminded Nigerians that the new tariff regime which is cost-reflec­tive is not to short-change customers but to improve on the level of liquidity available to the entire elec­tricity value chain.