No successful power reform without realistic tariff ' DFID

The Head of Office, Department for International Development, Mr. Richard Montgomery, has called on stakeholders driving the privatisation process to put in place a realistic electricity tariff plan.Montgomery, who stated this in Abuja on Thursday at the Nigeria Energy and Power Summit, also called on the Federal Government to ensure transparency in the sale of the electricity firms slated for privatisation, as that was the only way to attract quality investors into the sector.He said, The coming weeks will be crucial in the reform process, and by implication, for Nigeria as a nation. Despite the great efforts that have been made, there is still much to do before the government can be confident of attracting good investors. The government must ensure that bidders have both the policy framework and the information they need in order to submit good bids. In both areas, there remains more work to do.Some issues are well known. There can be no successful reform without the introduction of a realistic tariff for electricity. It will be hard to attract good bidders unless there is a resolution of outstanding labour issues.He said although the Federal Government and the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission were working hard to deal with the issues, there were also many areas where more detailed work was needed, noting that efforts must be redoubled if the reform was to be successful.According to him, a look across the range of economic reforms currently underway shows that none is more important than those aimed at solving the problems of poor power supply.He said, consistently, every survey on the barriers to business and investment, had identified lack of reliable power supply as the biggest problem holding back development.Speaking further, he argued that the success or failure of the privatisation exercise should not be judged by the number of transactions that took place but by the quality of those transactions.He said, If bids of sufficient quality are not received for some assets, it will be far better to retain those assets and have a second round of sales later than to sell to bidders who may not deliver on their commitments.
Click here to read full news..