The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) reported on Tuesday that electricity distribution companies (DisCos) recorded 95.21% market remittance in the second quarter of 2023, representing the highest remittance by them so far.
The Commission, in its just published ‘Electricity on Demand; report, indicated that the combined upstream bill that DisCos were expected to pay totalled N194.69 billion, comprising N154.04 billion for generation costs from the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) and N40.65 billion for transmission and administrative services facilitated by the Market Operator (MO).
Out of this amount, the DisCos remitted a total of N185.36 billion (N152.48 billion for NBET and N32.88 billion for the MO), leaving an outstanding balance of N9.32 billion, representing a remittance performance of 95.21% in Q2 2023 compared to the 67.43% recorded in the previous quarter.
Industry analysts believe that the improved remittance by the DisCos in the quarter indicates that they did better in fulfilling their financial obligations to NBET and MO, ensuring a higher percentage of payments made in relation to the total amount due.
On revenue generation, the report indicated that the DisCos collected a total of N267 billion in revenue in Q2 2023 reflecting a collection efficiency of 75.54% for the quarter out of the total billing value amounting to N354.61 billion.
The Commission reported that the improved revenue generation capacity showed an improvement of 6.79% when compared to the first quarter of 2023, when the collection efficiency stood at 68.75%.
The NERC linked the boost in collection efficiency to two main factors, namely the increased metering of consumers, which ensured a more accurate measurement of electricity consumption, as well as the DisCos’ sundry collection campaigns targeting pre-paid customers, which encouraged timely and complete remittances.
According to the NERC report, during the second quarter under review, the ATC&C loss stood at 38.41% and comprised technical and commercial losses of 18.47% and collection losses of 24.46%.
Even then the ATC & C loss still reflected an improvement, as it decreased by 7.98 percentage points when compared to the 46.39% loss recorded in Q1 2023.
