By Chineme Okafor in Abuja  Â
The recalcitrant financial attitudes of electricity distribution companies (Discos) to statutory payments for electricity sold to them by the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET) every month seems to have persisted with just four of them – Abuja, Enugu, Jos and Yola reported as the only Discos that paid parts of their monthly bills to the NBET in January.
A January 2018 market report on the monthly remittance of monies to the NBET by the Discos, which was released on Tuesday in Abuja by NBET, disclosed that for the second month running, the remittance standings of the Discos have not improved but rather dropped as the number of those that failed to remit monies in December 2018 rose from five to seven in January.
The report indicated that in January, an average of 2,445.06 megawatts hour (MWh) of electricity was received by the Discos every day representing 92.93 per cent of the total electricity that the generation companies (Gencos) produced daily.
It explained that this amounted to an invoice of N44.85 billion which was sent to the Discos, and out of which only N6.08 billion was received by the NBET from the January invoice. NEBT said this represented just 13.58 per cent of the invoice.
Going further, NBET explained that in fact, the Discos’ payments for the January invoice amounted to N2.70 billion, but that it got a N3.37 billion payment from them as late payment for December invoice, which brought the total payment it got from them to N6.08 billion in January.
Details later…
