The Federal Government has borrowed another N264bn ($1.6bn) to for expansion of power transmission facilities as it continues with its transformation agenda in the transformation sector.
This came from the Minister of Power, Professor Chinedu Nebo yesterday, who added that with the successful conclusion of the sale of the country’s power generation and distribution companies, Nigerians will soon begin to enjoy the positive benefits of the privatisation of the sector.
Nebo wdisclosed the new foreign loan incurred by government while addressing journalists at the Presidential Villa after a meeting of the Presidential Action Committee on Power (PACP), saying that the new facility is to come in form of loans from the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the Euro Bond Issue and the Chinese Exim Bank.
The meeting, which lasted for over two hours, was presided over by President Goodluck Jonathan and had Vice President Mohammed Namadi Sambo and several others ministers in attendance.
The minister said, “Much of the deliberations today were centered on expanding the transmission network in Nigeria to ensure that all the power generating plants that Nigeria is now building and commissioning, we have substantially adequate capacity to pull out power. So, the presentation today was by the Transmission Company of Nigeria and that was to explain to the PACP all the things we need to do to make sure that all the power generated between now and several years to come, the capacity is there to do that and also to point out the funding gaps and very thankfully to the President and National Council on Privatisation, Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) and Federal Ministries of Power and Finance and Petroleum and much of what is needed to do these things are being put in place.
“We also have substantial funding coming in the form of loans from the World Bank, African Development Bank, Euro Bond Issue and Chinese Exim Bank and NDPHC had already designated $1.6 billion for the expansion of transmission facilities in the country. The government is adequately prepared, everybody is excited at what has just happened, that we had such a significant compliance of all the preferred bidders who bought the GENCOs and the DISCOs as you can very well tell, most of them have paid up and most people thought it was never going to happen.”
Nigeria had recently borrowed $3bn from China, part of which would be going into power transmission projects.
Meanwhile, the minister of Information, Mr Labaran Maku has stated that all the 11 power plants being constructed by the President Goodluck Jonathan administration will become fully operational before the end of the first quarter of 2014 confirming that seven have already been completed awaiting to be hooked up to the national grid.
Maku who disclosed this in Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital, yesterday after a PDP stakeholders’ meeting preparatory to the forthcoming national convention of the party, said in addition to the ten that were captured during the Good Governance Tour, new hydroelectric power plant was being constructed in Zungeru which brings the total number to 11.
“We are building a new power plant in Zungeru, a hydroelectric power plant, so we are building eleven major power plants and seven have been completed awaiting to be hooked to the national grid. The other four shall be completed between now and the first quarter of next year” he said.
He also revealed that government has completed more than half of the 220 injection sub-stations needed to stabilize the power to be generated to ensure equitable and efficient distribution.
“We have also completed 150 of the 220 injection sub-stations to stabilize power and hold more of the power we are going to generate, so we are preparing the national grid by transforming the transmission infrastructure. But the most significant thing about power is that a lot of private sector investment is coming in to take over the power sector from the government so all the ones we have built we are already selling them out. This means that our approach is different and henceforth power will no longer be run by the bureaucracy of government but by the private sector who will run it to make profit thereby making it more efficient” he stated.
What this means is a reversal from public to privately owned and controlled power sector with the Information Minister saying “today if there is no power people still have their salaries, it is no longer going to be so. What you are seeing in the telecoms sector is what is going to be replicated in the power sector where private companies would generate and sell power such that if they don’t generate they lose their money”.
“We only appeal to Nigerians to be patient because there is no way any government would have done magic, in fact president Jonathan has done magic by completing seven power plants in two years” he appealed.