GenCos receive payments of 80 per cent invoices, says NDPHC boss

Electricity

Managing Director of the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC), Joseph Chiedu Ugbo, yesterday hinted that the power sector has witnessed improvement in its takings.

He said the N701 billion power purchase guarantee fund approved by the Federal Government has facilitated payment of about 80 per cent of invoices of Power Generation Companies (GenCos).

He disclosed this while giving an end of year update on the operations of the NDPHC.

Ugbo said since the approval of the fund by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and releases by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to the Nigeria Electricity Bulk Trader (NBET), NBET now pays the cost of gas being used by GenCos to the gas suppliers, while the invoices of power purchased are paid to the GenCos.

“Every month, we put on our invoice, they check out gas cost and they pay our gas suppliers directly. After they had paid for the gas cost, it comes to about 50 per cent. So, we were getting about 80 per cent of our invoices paid now.

“So, generation companies technically, get 80 percent of their invoices paid now and that is why you can see generation companies, at least we can cope now and have money to do our transmission and distribution projects,” he added.

He explained that the Federal Government was doing this for two years from January 2017 to December 2018, as it was implementing the Power Sector Recovery Plan (PSRP) in collaboration with the World Bank on a performance based loan arrangement.