Essar, Tatas qualify to participate in Nigerian power sector privatisation

Indian conglomerates Essar and Tatas figure in the list prepared by Nigerian authorities as candidate companies that qualify for picking up firms created out of Power Holding Company of Nigeria, says a media report.

According to Nigerian daily 'THISDAY', Dangote Industries, Oando Gas and Power, Honeywell Energy Resources International, Actis Infrastructure, an Essar consortium and Tata Group are prequalified companies for the next stage of privatisation of successor companies of PHCN.

Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN), which monitors the African nation's power sector, was unbundled into 18 entities and, out of them, six are generation companies, 11 distribution firms and one transmission entity.

Nigeria's Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) is handling the privatisation process and, as per the report, it would sell six generation companies and 11 distribution firms by way of privatisation and appoint a management contractor for the transmission firm.

It noted that Dangote, Actis Infrastructure, Abu Dhabi National Energy Company, Marubeni Corporation, AES Corp and Tata were among 40 companies that had their bids pre-qualified for the controlling shares of hydro-generation companies.

The daily said an Essar consortium, Korean Electricity Power Corporation, Supertek and China Southern Power Grid were among 87 firms, whose bids had been pre-qualified for acquisition of thermal generation companies.