The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has said the Federal Government has no plan to sell state-owned Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) to private investors.
It however said a suitable model for the unbundling of the company was being considered. TCN is the only government owned and operated component of the country’s power sector, since the privatisation of the generation and distribution components since 2013. Director, BPE energy department, Yunana Malo, at a conference in Abuja, on Monday, said the bureau would rather hand the TCN over to a private company in a concession agreement to derive maximum value.
He explained that the decision was imperative, considering that the transmission segment is the weak link in the power sector reform.
According to Malo, generation which was privatised had since attracted a lot of investments, while 60 per cent of the distribution segment had also been partially privatised and was beginning to pick up through the federal government’s reforms.
“The seemingly weak link is the transmission component. It is still 100 per cent owned by the FG. The idea is to think outside the box and bring in solutions that will make the transmission component service the value chain and make it more efficient,” NAN quoted him as saying.
“Government is not thinking of privatising, it is thinking of ways and means that the private capital can be brought into the transmission component without giving out the ownership of the Transmission Company.”
Malo explained that the BPE would concession the transmission company “so that we can have somebody building the high tension lines, covering areas that have not been reached or to maintain the existing ones to get maximum value, to move from the radial system we have today into a mesh.”
“So the idea is not to privatise but to reform and make it efficient, bringing in private sector operational modalities within the transmission company.”
On the federal government’s 40 percent stake in the electricity distribution companies (DisCos), Malo said the shares were still intact and protected by BPE.
Also speaking at the event, Alex Okoh, BPE director-general, said that N1 trillion had been generated from 234 concluded transactions of previously government-owned enterprises from various sectors of the economy over the years.
According to him, the BPE is expecting to generate N493.40 billion net revenue from various transactions approved by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP).
Okoh said the plan to privatise refineries had been dropped as the federal government considered other approaches to revitalise and improve on them.
