The Chairman of Momas Electricity Meter Manufacturing Company Limited (MEMMCOL), Mr Kola Balogun has appealed to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to create advancement credit line of single digit to meter manufacturers for effective execution of the Meter Assets Providers (MAP) schemes.
Balogun who made the appeal recently in Lagos attributed funding as a major challenge to the execution of the projects for meter manufacturers.
“Essentially for this scheme to be successful, we will need between N10 to N20 billion for each of the manufacturers. Its a huge capital outlay, we urge CBN to offer us the credit and also allow us to pay back in single digit interest rate”, he said. Stressing that, MEMMCOL is more than ready to commence operation as they are well prepared for it.
“It is just that for us to start execution, we still require the CBN support because of the capital outlay that is required to have efficient deployment. We need CBN to intervene.”
He said that meter manufacturers were at the position of negotiation in terms of execution of the MAP programme with the Discos.
“We are just waiting for a letter engagement and the extent of the volume we are going to be deploying.
According to him, “the capacity is there but the funding that it required is the major constraint and that was the reason why we are appealing to CBN for intervention.”
“The bottleneck on agreement of terms and condition also slow down the commencement of the projects, you know that there are so many variable involved such as insurance, ability to be able to support the scheme in terms of infrastructures, logistic arrangement.
“These are the things DISCOs want to ascertain before they would now conclude on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to be submitted to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC). Thereafter, appropiate license will be issued to prospective operators
Balogun said that the project would be more beneficiary to electricity consumers when it finally kick start, adding that issues of estimated billing and overbilling would also be abolished.
He said that electricity consumers would pay exactly for what they consumed and they would be able to read their consumption rates without prejudice. “Once the scheme commences, consumers will now pay into the joint MAP account that will be managed by the meter manufacturers and DISCOs under the Meter Asset provider scheme.
“It is expected that the scheme will commenced before May, deployment of meter to customers will commence in earnest” he said.
