NERC elected into executive council of African Utility Regulators
Nigeria has been elected a member of the Executive Council of the African Federation of Utility Regulators (AFUR) at the just concluded 6th conference of the body that held in Abidjan Cote D’Ivore. Nigeria representative on the continental body, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had in a position paper at the forum, urged other African countries to step up efforts at ensuring implementation of policies that would improve infrastructure as a way to address needs of the poor.
The Commission’s Administrator, Mallam Imamuddeen Talba said, “Regulators must ensure the implementation of policies to address the needs of the poor. Economic policies can be achieved via infrastructure reforms.”
In his paper entitled ‘Infrastructure Services Decentralisation Challenges and Lessons for Poverty Reduction Policies- The Nigerian Power Sector Experience’ Talba said that improved services have a direct impact on industrialisation, growth of small and medium sized enterprises and other value-creating linkages that could impact on poverty reduction.
Citing a specific example of Nigeria, the Administrator said that decentralization of services in the power sector, as being envisaged by the Federal Government, offers an opportunity to improve access to electricity services.
While urging members of the international community to invest in the country’s power sector, he said that the challenges being faced by intending investors were being addressed by the Commission.
He said that the introduction of the new tariff regime for the industry, using the Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO), was to ensure cost reflective tariff regime that would attract investment into the sector especially as most of the state-owned projects are based on public-private partnerships finance model.
Talba explained that the subsidy component of the new tariff regime which amounts to $1.18 billion over a period of three years was to ensure that investors have guaranteed cost recovery tariff regime while protecting the consumers against any serious rate shock on account of adjustment in the unit cost of electricity.
He said that the Commission was working on establishing Power Consumer Assistance Fund so as to further strengthened the market and that the framework for the implementation of the Fund would be completed.
He observed that States Government would require a regulatory framework which would assure them that power generated through their investments could be enjoyed within the states and that existing state of transmission infrastructure.
