Joseph Bakare
Thought the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), has denied endorsing new electricity tariff but document sighted by the media shows that the Commission has approved a new tariff to be charged by the 11 Electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos) in the country with effect from April.
The last review was done in 2015.
Under the new tariff regime, residential customers of the Abuja Electricity Distribution Company (AEDC) that were paying N27.20 per unit will now pay N47.09.
Ikeja Electricity Distribution Company’s residential customers, the R3 category that was formerly paying N26.50 per unit will now pay N36.92 per unit.
“The commercial customers C3 that paid N24.63 per unit in 2015 are to now pay N38.14 per unit.
“The industrial customers of the IKEDC D3 that paid N25.82 per unit are now to pay N35.85 per unit. The difference is now the additional 10.03 per unit, representing an increase of 357.42 percent”.
NERC said that Enugu Electricity Distribution Company residential (R3) customers that were paying N27.11 per unit in 2015 are to now pay N48.12 per unit.
The directive of the new tariff regime for different DisCos and category of customers was published on the NERC website on Saturday.
It was signed by the NERC Chairman, Prof. James Momoh and Secretary, Mr Dafe Akpedeye.
The commission said that the order superseded the earlier one issued on the subject matter, and “the new tariff regime takes effect from Jan. 1, 2020.
NERC noted that the order had taken into consideration, other actual changes in relevant macroeconomic variables and available generation capacity as of October 31 2019.
The commission said the order was in line with updating the Multi-Year Tariff Order (MYTO) operating -2015 Tariff Order for 2019 in line with the provisions of the amended MYTO Methodology.
“Projections are made for the variables for the year 2020 and beyond based on the best available information.
“The commission, however, based adjustments in the tariff, on the relevant data obtained from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) such as average monthly inflation rate of 11.3 per cent, exchange rate of N309.97”.
The commission directed that “all DisCos are obligated to settle their market invoices in full as adjusted and netted off by the applicable tariff shortfall.
