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Electricity: 10 firms battle for Afam, Kaduna today

By on August 1, 2013

Ten firms prequalified and approved by the National Council on Privatisation will on Wednesday (today) fight for the right to acquire majority stakes in two electricity firms, Afam Power Plc and Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company.

Afam Power Plc and Kaduna Distribution Company are two of the 18 successors companies carved out of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria Plc and are scheduled for sale to private sector operators.

For the Kaduna Disco, Axis Power Distribution Limited, NAHCO Consortium, INCAR Consortium, Aiteo Consortium, LEDA Consortium, Northwest Power Limited and Copperbelt Consortium have been pre-qualified by the NCP chaired by Vice-President Namadi Sambo.

Primeniza Energy Limited, TES Power Limited and Taleveras Group were pre-qualified for Afam, while Foby Energy Limited was disqualified.

The privatisation agency had recently dispatched letters to the shortlisted bidders to come for the bid opening ceremony, which will be held in Abuja.

The Head, Public Communications, Bureau of Public Enterprises, Mr. Chigbo Anichebe, confirmed in an invitation sent to stakeholders on Tuesday that the bid — opening ceremony would hold on Wednesday.

Although a total of 48 firms had expressed interest in the acquisition of majority stake in Afam Power Plc and Kaduna Distribution Company, 28 failed to submit their financial and technical bids by the end of the deadline.

Nine bids were eventually received for Afam Power Plc and 11 for the Kaduna Distribution Company.

The bidders for the Kaduna Distribution Company will be evaluated based on Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection loss reduction proposals submitted to the BPE along with the technical proposals.

The eventual winner will have to pay 60 per cent of the asset worth of the company as determined earlier by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission.

It will pay 60 per cent because the Federal Government is selling only that, while retaining 40 per cent equity in the company.

The Afam Power Plc and Kaduna Electricity Distribution Plc were among the 17 PHCN successor companies that were earlier advertised for sale in December 2010, and both, along with the others, went through a tender process that culminated in the submission of technical and financial proposals in July 2012.

However, none of the bids received for Afam and Kaduna scored the minimum 75 per cent required to progress to the financial bid stage. This compelled the NCP to order a rerun of the entire transaction.

Already, 15 of the successor companies have got preferred bidders. The preferred bidders beat the March 21 deadline to pay 25 per cent of the bid prices. They are now required to pay the remaining 75 per cent bid prices on or before September 21.

 

 

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