By Oscarline Onwuemenyi
Representatives and Chief Executive Officers, CEOs, of Independent Power Producers, IPPs, in Nigeria have complained that the cumbersome processes of assessing financial packages for investments in power generation from the World Bank may affect Power Purchase Agreements, PPAs.

The delay in accessing these facilities has locked in up to 13,000 Megawatts of power, which would have been completed and fed into the National Grid.

The IPPs which met with the management of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, in Abuja criticised what they described as organisational delay in securing risk guarantee and gas supply agreement, which are vital to the completion and execution of projects initiated by them.

Representatives of the over 60 licensed IPPs told the NERC Chairman, Dr. Sam Amadi, who convened a fact-finding meeting with them, that the process of assessing and utilising the Partial Risk Guarantee, PRG, a form of financial comfort secured by the Federal Government from the World Bank, to encourage investments in the power sector, will take an average of two years.

According to them, the time consuming processes involved in securing the PRG will, in effect, delay the signing of PPAs and ultimately, the completion of some power projects.

Specifically, the Executive Director of Supertek Nigeria, Mr. Ray Oguego, and the Chief Technical Adviser of Geometric Power, Mr. Ben Caven, said that the IPPs are consistently faced with the challenges of gas supply and bureaucratic bottleneck in securing PRG from the World Bank.