Amidst the dismal power supply in the country, Nigerians spent N259.7 billion on power in the second quarter of this year.
The amount spent was largely impacted by the Service-Based Tariff (SBT) introduced by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).
The NERC had increased electricity tariff and also introduced the service-based tariff, assuring that power supply would improve but not much has changed.
In the second quarter report released by NERC, the current remittances by the DisCos represent a 1.78 per cent point decrease from the final settlement rate recorded in the first quarter of 2021.
On the minimum remittance order of the regulator, NERC noted that none of the utility companies lived to expectations apart from Eko Disco.
The report indicated that the remittance to the Nigeria Electricity Bulk Trading averaged 76 per cent.
“Discos’ remittance performance level ranged from 10.51 per cent (Yola) to 63.69 per cent (Eko) for NBET and 28.76 per cent (Yola) to 99.88 per cent (Eko) for market operator (MO).
“Ikeja recorded zero remittance to MO in the months of May and June 2021 as they waited to resolve the Service Level Agreement dispute.”
On commercial performance, the report stated that the total billing to and collection from electricity consumers by all the 11 Discos stood at N268.97bn and N185.29bn respectively during the quarter under review, implying a collection efficiency of 68.89 per cent.
According to the report, collection efficiency remained dismal. At least N3.11 out of every N10 worth of energy sold during the second quarter of 2021 was not collected.
“Thus, only a marginal improvement in the collection efficiency is noticeable over the 68.55 per cent recorded in the first quarter 2021,” NERC said.
