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NERC bemoans IPP's woes

From TONY OTARU, Abuja

INSUFFICIENT gas supply, inadequate finances and turban equipments are currently posing serious challenges to the success of the independent power projects across the country.

The chairman, Nigerian Electricity Commission (NERC) Dr. Ransome Owan said although about 29 licenses have been issued to private power providers to generate electricity, till date, many of the IPP's have not been able to go far in their various projects because of shortage of gas, turban equipments and insufficient funds as a result of the high interest rates charged by the banks to finance the projects.

Owan gave the revelations at the Quarterly meeting organized by NERC for the IPPS on project status, held in Abuja.

The NERC chairman said, “we have so far issued a total number of 29 IPP Licences to private company's to generate power which will add additional 10, 271mw to the grid when all of the IPP'S becomes fully operational” but it has being discovered that the IPP'S are currently facing above mentioned problems hence we are holding this stakeholders meeting.

He explained that the commission is also aware that the licenses have been constrained in the fulfilment of certain milestones which require interventions in giving the proper guild lines or directive, kindly feel free to brainstorm on this issues at this forum so that we know how to find solutions to them and go ahead,
“Today, we want to know some of your constraints and challenges apart from the ones we already know in the quest of recommending to government the needed step to be taken so as to make the projects work”, the NERC chairman noted.

He stressed that NERC is aware of the progress made by most of the licensed IPP'S to attain the given milestones inspite of some of the difficulties and challenges arising from the nature of power projects, but remember that we have repeated time without number, that power projects are not only capital intensive, their gestation period for realizing the projects is also long.

He called on participants and all stakeholders in the power sector to deliberate exhaustively at, the meeting and come-up with recommendations of how the teething problems will be solved.

In his message to the occasion, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Power (Energy), Dr. Abdulahi Alliu said that the 50 percent supplementary budget for the NIPP projects have recently been passed by the National Assembly adding that in the next few weeks, the projects started in 2006 would be completed Nationwide.
Contributing, the chairman of the independent power providers Association, Professor Bert Inagi said the major problem facing its members is that of financing their various projects as interest rates charged by banks were out ragious.

Inagi stressed, “We need that all stakeholders be on ground to help the IPP'S in this regard adding that the issue of tariff equipments like turban which are not manufactured here all adds to out constraints.
Professor Inagi also disclosed that presently, there is no active coal generation in Nigeria while soft issues like settling the chiefs or Local Village heads should not be over looked all of which complicated matters for the IPP'S.