The Federal Government has disclosed that the power sector gulped over N1trillion in three years as it subsidized electricity tariffs.
This is the gap between the Cost Reflective Tariff (CRT) and Allowable Tariff (AT) which peaked at N28 per unit of electricity supplied to consumers.
This, according to the government, was largely responsible for the liquidity crunch in the power sector as well as the poor power supply in the country.
Ahmad Zakari, Special Adviser to President Muhammadu on Infrastructure disclosed these details during the 12th edition of PriceWaterHouseCoopers PwC, Nigeria’s Annual Power and Utilities Roundtable, held recently.
He noted that the nation needs to optimise the potentials in the power sector through a cost-reflective tariff regime.
Consequently, it has disclosed its plans to re-align its policies, regulations and the activities of the power sector operators as a means of improving electricity supply.
He stated: “We need a holistic review, the first thing is regulatory and policy alignment. Through this measure by the government, we can eliminate the gap in service-based tariffs.
“At this time, DISCOs with the revised economic models will be faced with incentives and penalties that would allow them to be able to achieve optimisation. The second phase will now be infrastructure alignment. If the economics of tariff-based works, then infrastructure will be improved.
“With the cost-reflective tariff, everything will fall in place in the power sector. From the Government’s perspective, as we migrated towards this, we have an understanding that more needs to be done. For instance, our cost-reflective tariff (CRT) versus allowable tariff (AT) gap reached a peak of N28 gap in 2019, at that rate, between that period and 2021 alone, we would have recorded N1 trillion in tariff shortfall or subsidy.”
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He noted that “As in 2015, at the take-off of the power sector privatization, the gap between CRT and AT was about N15. That figure has been reduced to N6.
“The gap has closed from N28, N15 and now N6. Essentially, after the last MYTO, the cost-reflective tariff became N55 and the defective tariff that the DISCOs are allowed to charge was N49.
“By January next year, after the review of the MYTO, the tariff gap will be eliminated completely. That elimination of the tariff gap will ensure that we optimise and get all of our installed 12Giggawatt of electricity generation capacity delivered.”
