Meter Manufacturers Seek Single Digit Credit Line

• Meter Manufacturers Seek Single Digit Credit Line

Momas Electricity Meter Manufacturing Company Limited (MEMMCOL) Chairman, Kola Balogun has appealed to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to create an advancement credit line of single digit to meter manufactures for effective execution of the Meter Assets Providers (MAP) scheme.

Balogun, who spoke in Lagos, at the weekend, identified paucity of funds as a major challenge to the execution of the projects for meter manufacturers.

He said: “Essentially, for this scheme to be successful, we will need between N10 billion and N20 billion for each of the manufacturers.

“It’s a huge capital outlay. We urge the CBN to offer us the credit and allow us to pay back in single digit interest rate. We are more than ready to commence because we 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 the CBN to intervene.”

Balogun said meter manufacturers were at the position of negotiation, in terms of the execution of the MAP scheme, with the electricity distribution companies (DisCos)

“We are just waiting for letters of engagement and the extent of the volume we are going to be deploying. The capacities are there, but the funding that it requires is the major constraint and that was the reason why we are appealing to the CBN to intervene.

“This is for providing advance credit line to meter manufactures so that they can buy raw materials ahead of time.

“The bottlenecks on agreement of terms and condition also slow down the commencement of the projects. You know that there are so many variables involved such as insurance, ability to support the scheme in terms of infrastructure and logistic arrangement.

“These are the things DisCos want to ascertain before they would conclude on the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to be submitted to the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC).

“It is after the signing of the MoU that NERC will now give licences to the operators,” he added.

Balogun said the project would benefit electricity consumers when it finally kicks off, adding that issues of estimated billing and over-billing would also be abolished.

He said electricity consumers would pay exactly for what they consume 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 manufactures and DisCos under the Meter Asset provider scheme. It is expected that the scheme will commence before May and the deployment of meters to customers will commence in earnest.

“After the signing of the MoU, we don’t know when NERC will give us the licence so that rollout schedule will be agreed upon as well as mapping of the area. What NERC wanted to do is the totality of substation; all consumers attached to the substations would be metered 100 per cent, in other to get exact value to the energy auditing process.”