Afam power plant, Yola DisCo to be privatised soon – BPE

The Director-General of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), Alex Okoh, has disclosed that the 960MW Afam power plant in River state and the Yola Electricity Company will be privatized soon.
Okoh, who spoke in an interview recently in Abuja, said privatisation of the 960 MW Afam power plant, which is one of the country’s oldest thermal power plants, which first failed in 2013, would be undertaken in the course of the year.
To this end, he disclosed that a technical adviser has been appointed for the transaction, which is expected to be completed in December this year, or in first quarter of 2019..
The BPE’s DG also said that the Yola electricity company has been slated for re-privatisation.
He explained that the disCO was among the 11 distribution companies privatised in 2013, but was returned to the federal government following a force majeure declared by the previous core investor.
Similarly, the BPE DG declared that the privatization of the country’s power sector would be reviewed to address the fundamental flaws hampering the effective operations in the sector.
According to him, the review will cover customers’ enumeration, to eliminate estimated billing challenges, improve metering infrastructure, cost-reflective pricing and tariff structure.
Okoh, however, divulged that the bureau had attracted about $7.8 billion foreign direct investments (FDIs) to the country within the 18 years of its existence on a net process basis.
He said: “We have privatised, commercialised and reformed about 142 enterprises using various transaction strategies, including core investors and concessioning.
“The privatisation process has been able to attract about $7.8 billion in total foreign direct investments into the country through the privatization of 53 enterprises in the different sectors of the economy,”.
On the impact of the activities of the bureau, Mr Okoh said about N400 billion of this year’s federal budget is projected to have come from the privatisation and commercialisation activities of the bureau.

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