Nigeria provided $550 million to its Sovereign Wealth Fund to help guarantee power trading and spur investments to build the country’s electricity market, Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said.
Out of the fund, $350 million will be used as “liquidity facility” for the state-owned electricity trader, which guarantees power sales by producers to distribution companies, Okonjo-Iweala told reporters today in the capital, Abuja. The remaining $200 million “will be for the infrastructure fund for gas-to-power investments.”
President Goodluck Jonathan in September handed control of 15 power generation and distribution companies spun out of the former state-owned power utility to new owners to boost output and end blackouts in the country, where demand is almost double the 4-gigawatt capacity. They include Transnational Corp. of Nigeria Plc and Siemens AG. (SIE) Nigeria still needs $14.2 billion annually to bridge its infrastructure gap, Okonjo-Iweala said.
Retrieved from:businessweek
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