AEDC raises revenue collection to N5.9bn as losses to 40%

The Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) said it has improved its revenue collection to N5.9 billion in March 2018 while it reduced its Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection (ATC&C) losses to less than 40 per cent.

The Managing Director of Copperbelt Energy Corporation (CEC) Africa, the core investor in AEDC, Emmanuel Katepa in an exclusive interview in Abuja said “We have had a fairly interesting year but there have been some challenges which are both internal and external. As at last year, our monthly collection was at N4.5 billion but that has greatly improved and as at last month, we were at N5.99bn in collection.

“That was due to the improvement in so many factors. Our ATC&C loss level has been coming down, like recently we were below 40 per cent on it. These are solid operational improvements,” Katepa said.

Highlighting some key challenges of the investors of the Distribution Company (DisCo), he noted that bulk energy tariff is still indexed in dollars as such the naira component of their payment to the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trading Plc (NBET) keeps rising.

He said “We have a situation where our bill to the market has been going up. The amount of the money we are paying into the market is going up, but the payment percentage of the invoice we receive is not improving from about 35 to 40 per cent because the figures are rising.”

Katepa noted that the firm is positioning itself to improve on revenue remittances for energy distributed to its customers across Kogi, Abuja, Nasarawa and Niger states this year by pushing for 60 per cent remittance level, from about 35 per cent presently.

“Internally, we are challenging ourselves to raise invoice from the NBET to about 55 or 60 per cent by the end of the year,” he said.

The firm said it installed 120,000 meters in 2017 and is doing another 30,000 units. “Prior to the Meter Assets Providers (MAP) Regulation, we had engaged PWC firm on a contract for 400,000 Small Power Users (SPU) meter installation within the next two years. We have consulted NERC on that after MAP came, and they have given us some feed back towards it,” Katepa said.

On the power sector investment environment, the CEC boss said investors have expectations based on the Nigerian economy when they took over the power assets. “That perspective of the investors needs to be addressed through proper consultations from them.”