THE Director, Energy Department of the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE), Mr Yunana Malo, on Monday said there was no plan to privatise the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), rather than that, the Bureau would concession it to get maximum value. He said, at a briefing in Abuja, that transmission was the weak link in the power reform, as generation which was privatised had since attracted a lot of investments, making it more efficient.
He said the generation capacity had improved, adding that 60 per cent of the distribution segment had also been partially privatised and was beginning to pick up through the reforms of the Federal Government. He said: “The seemingly weak link is the transmission component, it is still 100 per cent owned by the Federal Government. The idea is to think outside the box and bring in solutions that will make the transmission component service the value chain, and make it more efficient. Government is not thinking of privatising, it is thinking of ways and means that the private capital can be brought into the transmission component without giving out the ownership of the Transmission Company.”
He explained that the Bureau would concession the transmission segment. “So that we can have somebody building the high tension lines, covering areas that have not been reached or to maintain the existing ones to get maximum value, to move from the radial system we have today into a mesh. So the idea is not to privatise but to reform and make it efficient, bringing in private sector operational modalities within the transmission company,” he said.
On the Federal Government’s 40 per cent stake in the Distribution Companies (DISCOS), Malo said the shares were still intact and protected by BPE. Mr Alex Okoh, BPE Director-General, said over the years, N1 trillion had been generated from 234 concluded transactions of previously government-owned enterprises from various sectors of the economy. He said the Bureau expected to generate N493.40 billion net revenue from various transactions as approved by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP).
He said over 30 projects had been categorised under five segments with 22 of them carried over from 2020.