The Federal Government has announced that power consumers collectively paid a total of N267.86 billion in electricity bills during the second quarter of 2023.
This disclosure comes from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission’s (NERC) recently released second-quarter report, which also elaborates on the collection efficiency of power distribution companies during the same period.
Improved electricity bill collection
The report stated that “the total revenue collected by all Discos in 2023/Q2 was N267.86 billion out of N354.61 billion billed to customers.”
This translates to a collection efficiency of 75.54 percent, representing a notable increase of 6.79 percentage points compared to the first quarter of 2023, which saw a collection efficiency of 68.75 percent.
The improved collection efficiency can be attributed to increased metering by Discos and the implementation of various collection campaigns geared towards enhancing remittances by post-paid customers.
Regarding market remittances, the NERC report revealed that in 2023/Q2, the cumulative invoice payable by Discos was N194.69 billion.
This amount was comprised of N154.04 billion for generation costs from the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) and N40.65 billion for transmission and administrative services provided by the market operator.
Out of this sum, the Discos collectively remitted a total of N185.36 billion, with N152.48 billion going to NBET and N32.88 billion for the market operator.
This translated to a remittance performance of 95.21 percent in the second quarter of 2023, a significant increase from the 67.43 percent recorded in the first quarter of the same year.
When it comes to remittance by special and cross-border customers, the report highlighted that, during the second quarter of 2023, only Transcorp-SBEE among the four international customers serviced by the market operator made a payment of $1.43 million, against an invoice of $2.13 million issued for services rendered during the same period.
The other three international customers did not make any payments against the $11.97 million invoice issued to them for services rendered.
In cumulative terms, bilateral customers made total payments of N816.66 million, but this fell short of the cumulative invoice amount of N2,845.08 million issued by the market operator for services rendered in the second quarter of 2023.