Mr. Samuel John Agbogun is the managing director/chief executive, Nigeria Electricity Liability Management Company Ltd (NELMCO). In this interview with DAVID ADUGE-ANI, he speaks on the mandates, responsibilities and challenges of the new agency.
What’s your key mandates at NELMCO?
Well, NELMCO is just an acronym for Nigeria Electricity Liability Management Company Limited, which was set up as part of the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN). As you are aware, the federal is trying to set up PHCN sub-companies. What happened was that during the planning stages, it was discovered that PHCN has more liabilities than assets.
So what government did was to create an institution to manage those liabilities. This institution is similar to Assets Management Commission of Nigeria (AMCON). The intention is for the liabilities to free those assets, so that government can sell those assets, which would encourage investors to buy and improve networks. That is what Bureau for Public Enterprises is doing now.
Now, NELMCO has therefore inherited all the PHCN liabilities. The National Council on Privatization has transferred it to NELMCO, through a transfer order. The shareholders of PHCN, which is the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and AMCON have signed all the necessary instruments. So, as I speak to you today, NELMCO has all the liabilities of PHCN.
What kind of liabilities are you talking about?
Yes, what we do here is that there are three kinds of liabilities. First are the liabilities owed to suppliers of services? There are also liabilities owed to government agencies, like the Federal Inland Revenue and the Industrial Training Fund (ITF). There are liabilities owed to power suppliers’ producer, like the Integrated Power Projects (IPPs).
There are also the liabilities owed to staff of PHCN, which is the pension. Basically these are the duties of NELMCO. So, What NELMCO does today is that it has inherited all these liabilities and is finding ways to paying them back. However, in carrying out this payment, the policy states that the company would inherit what they called non-core assets of PHCN.
These non-core assets of the PHCN are not necessarily needed to run the business. Examples of such non-core assets are the corporate headquarters, some golf courses and some staff quarters. NELMCO will inherit them, sell them and then use the proceeds, to settle part of the liabilities. If after that there is any shortfall, we will go to the federal government through the budget appropriation and get money and pay.
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