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FG to attract investments in power sector — Nebo

By BusinessNews Staff on May 25, 2014

The Federal Government will continue to create the enabling environment to attract investment in the power sector for efficient generation and distribution, the Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, has said.

Nebo said in Awka that there has been a lot of improvement in power generation despite the challenges in the sector. He said this was as a result of the successful privatisation programme in the sector which was concluded about six months ago.

Nebo said that vandalism and poor gas supply remained a big challenge to growth in the sector.

The federal government, he said, is already applying effective measures to check the menace, and assured that all would soon be a thing of the past. The minister said he was certain that power generation and distribution companies could drive the sector without financial constraints as they had the resources to do so. He further called for equal emphasis on distribution as against generation where most investment interest had been directed.

“The federal government is already tackling the challenges of vandalism which is actually shutting out gas supply with the deployment of high-tech protection systems. We are also trying to stabilise the market as well as the national grid itself. The Gencos and Discos cannot say they do not have the finance to drive the power sector because they promised they could do so.

“What the government is doing now, is to create enabling environment by attracting financial institutions from all over the world and multinational development partners to come to their aid. The major trend is that these investors prefer to fund Gencos as opposed to Discos, and in a matter of time both would be getting fair share,’’ he said.

[Vanguard]

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