Nigerian government pushes conclusion of deal with Siemens
Nigerian government directed ministries to conclude the engagement with Siemens to commence the financing aspects of the Presidential Power Initiative.
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Nigeria: The federal government of Nigeria has directed ministries to conclude the engagement with Siemens to commence the pre-engineering and concessionary financing aspects of the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI).
President Muhammadu Buhari has informed on the commencement of the next phase of the deal with Siemens to upgrade the nation’s dilapidated power infrastructure.
The presidency instructed the Ministry of Power, the Ministry of Finance, Budget and National Planning, as well as the Bureau of Public Enterprise, to speed up the process with the German engineering firm.
“Our goal is simply to deliver electricity to Nigerian businesses and homes. Our intention is to ensure that our cooperation is structured under a government-to-government framework. No middlemen will be involved so that we can achieve value for money for Nigerians,” Buhari said.
An agreement had been signed in July 2019 to rehabilitate and then expand the country’s electricity grid, which experiences regular power outages.
Nigeria has more than 13,000 MW of installed electricity generation capacity but only 7,500 MW is available and less than 4,000 MW is dispatched to the grid each day.
The partnership with Siemens will modernise the existing network before enlarging it until the country can produce and distribute 25,000 MW.
The project will be financed by concessionary loans covered by Euler Hermes Group SAS, a large provider of credit insurance, the statement said.
The government will “on-lend” the funding to the shareholders of Nigeria’s power distribution companies and Siemens will have sole responsibility for selecting its contractors, the Presidency stated.
Source: ESI Africa