Electricity: Over 7 million customers still on estimated billing — NERC

<p>A total of 7,017,809 Electricity customers are still on estimated billing despite various interventions by the government to bridge the metering gap, report has indicated.</p>, <p>Out of 12,378,243 registered customers as of 31st March 2023, only 5,360,434 have so far been metered.</p>, <p>According to the 2023 First quarter report released by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC), in the quarter being reviewed a total of 171,107 user customers were metered.</p>, <p>Although this represented a slight increase compared to the 164,621 customers recorded in 2022 fourth quarter, the metering rate is still at 43.31%.</p>, <p>In a breakdown, the data showed that out of the 171,107 metered customers, only about 9,924 were metered under the National Mass Metering Program (NMMP) while 2,515 and 34 were metered under the Vendor Financed and DisCo Financed schemes respectively.</p>, <p>However, more customers were metered under the Meter Asset Provider (MAP) intervention, with a total of 158,633.</p>, <p>Meanwhile, the state of revenue collection inefficiencies has continued to be a concern, especially on the part of the electricity Distribution Companies (DisCos).</p>, <p>The Regulator had attributed customers’ apathy towards payment of energy billed to majorly to unsatisfactory DisCos services.</p>, <p>“This has led to mounting collection losses recorded by the DisCos. Collection efficiency of 70% for instance implies that for every N100 worth of energy billed to customers by DisCos, approximately N30 remained unrecovered from the billed customers,” it said.</p>, <p>For instance, in the report being reviewed, the total revenue collected by all DisCos in the 2023 first quarter was N247.09 billion out of N359.38 billion billed to customers.</p>, <p>It said although this translates to a collection efficiency of 68.75%, the DisCos’ cumulative collection efficiency reduced by 4.58 percent Poing(pp) from 73.33% in 2022/Q4 to 68.75% in 2023/Q1.</p>, <p>Similarly, the report showed that while the total collecti