Nigeria seeks $5.2bn from World Bank for its power sector

Relief is on the way for Nigerian electricity consumers as the Federal Government has concluded plans to obtain a total of $5.2bn from the World Bank to improve on power generation, transmission and distribution in the country.
The loan is said to be different from the pending $1.2 billion facility for the 2016 budget deficit, and it will have a life span of 25 years for repayment.
It was learnt that the facility will be drawn from the various arms of the bank, including the World Bank’s private-sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is planning $1.3bn direct investments through the power generation and distribution firms in Nigeria.
According to a foreign online portal, another unit to be used for the loan is the World Bank’s political-risk insurer, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency(MIGA), which is to provide equity and debt of $1.4bn for gas and solar power programmes.
There will also be $2.5bn that the institution has approved with which Nigeria will use to expand power transmission capacity and increase access to electricity in rural areas.
Confirming this development, Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, said the disbursements with the World Bank are being worked out to start from around June or July this year (2017).
“Nigeria is asking the lender to bring forward the timetables for the releases of the facility because we want to see results before next year,” he added.
It is reported that Africa’s most populous nation has not been able to improve on its power generation capacity beyond 4,000 megawatts, compared with an average peak generation of about 35,000 megawatts in South Africa, with a population that is less than a third of the size of Nigeria’s 170 million people.




Gsent Talks.....Taking You Further