- Meter manufacturers, MAPs mulls hike in meter cost
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) intervention in the power sector will gulp over N120 billion due to the foreign exchange (forex) differentials, Daily Sun has learnt.
This was even as the Special Adviser to the President on Infrastructure, Mr. Ahmad Zakari, confirmed that the Federal Government was revving up its disbursement of a N120 billion capital expenditure (CAPEX) to improve infrastructure, especially to support the metering programme by the Distribution Companies (Discos).
The Federal Government as part of efforts to improve on power sector infrastructure, especially in the area of metering had set aside about N120 billion intervention fund to support the Discos.
However, recent developments by the CBN on exchange rates policy which saw harmonization of exchange rates with removal of N379/$1 official rate from its website to the adoption of the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Rate(NAFEX) also called the Investors and Exporters’(I &E )forex window, currently at N410.20.
With this development, the plan of the Federal Government to roll out about one million meters under its phase one of National Mass Metering Programme(NMMP) will see the CBN cough out above the projected N120 billion
NMMP is a metering initiative introduced by the Federal Government towards achieving mass metering of Nigerians by providing loan facility to DisCos for the procurement of meters for customers); and local meter manufacturers for production and assembling of meters.
Some of the meter manufacturers and Meter Asset Providers (MAP) are already developing cold feet over challenges around fixed meter price in a regime of depreciating foreign exchange rates, unavailability of foreign exchange from CBN, among other issues.
Other issues are; Customs clearing bottlenecks, implementation of the 35 per cent levy waiver granted by the President on fully built prepaid meters and improvements to the industry structure for accelerated prepaid meter deployment. The MAPs also noted the disruptions in global supply chain resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, with an attendant increase in international prices of raw materials and components required in the manufacture and assembly of prepaid meters.
