The Eligible Customer policy introduced by the Federal Government in the power sector will lead to a 14 per cent increase in the electricity tariff payable by residential consumers across the country, power distribution companies have said.
In July this year, the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said in order to accelerate power supply to industries and heavy consumers, the Federal Government had introduced Eligible Customer policy, pursuant to powers conferred by Section 27 of the Electric Power Sector Reform Act.
He explained that the policy was to enable heavy consumers using at least two megawatts of electricity to invest in the provision of the equipment and take power directly from generating companies that had the power. Fashola, who observed that power distributors initially resisted the policy, said they later reluctantly endorsed it. But in one of their latest documents on Nigerias power sector and the eligible customer policy, which was made available to our correspondent in Abuja by the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors, the Discos said they had no issue with the declaration by the government, but stressed that the policy would warrant a significant increase in residential tariff. Residential customers constitute the highest number of power users in Nigeria and their tariff is subsidised by the funds generated from heavy customers.
The power firms said in addition to the associated potential increase in the cost of energy to the customers, the reduction in the Discos revenue would jeopardise any plans for improvement in the delivery of service. As an example, most eligible customers are currently being charged about N40/kwh; whereas when they leave, the energy will now be sold at about N26/kwh. This revenue loss of N14 would need to be made up by a tariff increase to the ordinary customers, the Discos stated.
(Punch)
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