The Bureau of Public Enterprises has short-listed 525 bids for the 17 successor companies created out of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria in the next stage of the privatisation of the electricity utility company.
A statement by the agency, on Wednesday, said 253 and 272 bids were pre-qualified for the distribution and generating companies respectively.
According to the statement, signed by the spokesman for the BPE, Mr. Chukwuma Nwokoh, the secretariat of the National Council on Privatisation harvested 929 bids for the successor companies from the 331 Expressions of Interest received from prospective investors.
The list of pre-qualified bidders, Nwokoh said, was approved by the Chairman of the NCP, Vice-President Namadi Sambo, in line with the privatisation procedure.
Each of the pre-qualified bidders will be required to pay a $20,000 fee for each company of interest and sign a confidentiality agreement before receiving bid documents and being admitted to the Data Room.
At the end of the March 4, 2011 deadline for the submission of bids by prospective investors, the BPE had received 331 EOI envelopes, which were broken into 174 for the generating companies and 157 for the distribution companies.
However, the total number of individual bids for the successor companies increased to 929 when the 331 EOI envelopes were opened and the individual bids were sorted out. The breakdown of the individual bids showed that 529 bids were submitted for the distribution companies and 400 bids for the generating firms.
The BPE had developed evaluation criteria in accordance with the requirements of the EOI. It also considered a benchmark that would provide reasonable basis for pre-qualifying bids, while a strong inter-agency committee undertook the assignment.
Between December 13 and 20, 2010, the bureau had published adverts in local and foreign media inviting prospective core investors to express interest in the 11 distribution companies unbundled from the PHCN.
It also invited prospective core investors to express interest in the four thermal power stations and apply as concessionaires for the two hydro power stations. The initial deadline for the receipt of the EOIs was Friday, February 18, 2011.
But following representations by prospective investors, who attended the five-country Electric Power Investors’ Forum, which was to court world-class investors to participate in the privatisation of the successor companies, the Federal Government approved the extension of the deadline to Friday, March 4, 2011.
The forums were held in Lagos (January 18-19), Dubai (January 24-25), London (January 27-28), New York (February 1-2) and Johannesburg (February 10-11.)
Potential bidders for the distribution companies are expected to be existing power distribution companies or core investor groups with power distribution companies as long-term technical partners.
Successful bidders will be responsible for operating the distribution companies and making the necessary investments to improve the distribution network and customer service in line with the objectives of the government as set out in the National Electric Power Policy.
As for the generating companies, potential bidders/concessionaires, who must be local and/or international power generators or investors with power generators as long-term technical partners, will be responsible for operating the stations, improving their generation capacity and making necessary investments in them in line with the objectives of the NEPP.