Consumers paid N362bn out of the N520bn billed them by the distribution companies in the country from January to September last year. According (The Association of Nigerian Electricity Distributors) the umbrella body for the 10 private Discos in the country, the collection of Electricity bills improved as a result of DisCos’ efforts to recoup losses during the COVID-19 lockdown, although the energy received by them dropped by 4.3 percent in Q3.
ANED further said that “The Discos are back on track on their performance improvement after the fall due to the pandemic. Indeed, in September 2020, Discos collection reached a new record of N44.5bn,” it said. ANED said the DisCos’ collection efficiency rose to 76.28 percent in Q3. Revenue collection by distribution companies in Nigeria rose to N130bn in the third quarter of 2020 from N105bn in Q2 and N125bn in Q1, according to their latest quarterly performance report. ANED said the power firms lost N158bn, representing 30.38 percent of the energy billed in the nine-month period.
ANED said that “Due to the severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular during the Q2 2020, the ATC&C (Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection loss KPI (moving average) keeps increasing and is now at 46.1 percent. Paradoxically, the MYTO financial model that determines the tariff has not been adjusted and still considers average ATC&C losses of about 20 percent for this year.”
It is expected that collections will significantly improve in the fourth quarter when the NERC approved and introduced increments of 50% and more in various supply categorizations.
