Power sector may collapse if… – LCCI

The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) said there is the risk of total collapse of the power sector if left entirely in the realm of the public sector.

The Director-General (DG) of LCCI, Dr. Muda Yusuf, in his comment on the development around the power sector and increment in tariff, noted that the power sector needed huge investment to guarantee power supply.

“Attracting private capital requires that pricing must be right to ensure that the economics of investment makes sense to the investors,” and pointed to the success story of the private sector-driven transformation in the telecom sector, noting that it could be replicated in the power and the petroleum sectors if an appropriate policy environment was created.

The LCCI boss further mentioned that Nigeria became an oil producing country over six decades ago and that yet there were no significant private sector investments in practically the entire value chain of the downstream petroleum sector.

The entire space he said had been dominated by public enterprises with the attendant inefficiencies and fiscal leakages which had done enormous damage to the Nigerian economy.

He lamented that the economy had been denied the benefits of the vast investment opportunities which the oil and gas sector offered, which include unlocking the huge private investment potentials in the downstream oil sector.