FG to attract investments in power sector

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

Nebo told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday 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.