The billing efficiency of electricity distribution companies (DisCos) dropped to 81.18% in the first quarter of 2025.
This is a decline from the 83.53% recorded in the previous quarter.
This is according to the latest report from the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) for Q1 2025.
According to the NERC, “Although the total energy received by all DisCos in 2025/Q1 was 8,169.00GWh, the energy billed to end-use customers was only 6,631.92GWh, translating into an overall billing efficiency of 81.18%.”
According to the report, this represents a 2.48% decrease compared to the billing efficiency of 83.66% recorded in Q4 2024.
NERC further noted that the Aggregate Technical, Commercial, and Collection (ATC&C) loss across all DisCos in Q1 2025 stood at 39.61%, consisting of a technical and commercial loss of 18.82% and a collection loss of 25.61%.
“The ATC&C loss of 39.61% is 19.07pp higher than the 2025 MYTO target (20.54%) and translates to a cumulative revenue loss of N200.495 billion across all DisCos,” NERC noted.
As explained by NERC, ATC&C loss represents the combined impact of billing losses arising from a DisCo’s inability to bill 100% of the energy delivered to customers (technical and commercial losses) and collection losses, which result from the DisCo’s inability to collect 100% of the billed amounts from customers.
“The ATC&C loss increased by 4.39pp (worse performance) compared to 2024/Q4 (35.22%). All the DisCos failed to achieve their target ATC&C during the quarter, with Kaduna DisCo recording the worst underperformance relative to the target ATC&C (Actual – 68.57% vs. target – 21.32%),” NERC reported.
DisCos revenue collection decline in Q1 2025
The report further showed that the total revenue collected by all DisCos in Q1 2025 was N553.63 billion out of N744.27 billion billed to customers.
This translates to a collection efficiency of 74.39%, representing a decrease of 3.05pp compared to Q4 2024, which was 77.44%.
In the first quarter of 2025, the cumulative upstream invoice payable by the distribution companies (DisCos) stood at N432.13 billion.
The NERC noted that this comprised N370.37 billion for DisCo’s Remittance Obligation (DRO)-adjusted generation costs from the Nigerian Bulk Electricity Trading (NBET) company, and N61.76 billion for transmission and administrative services rendered by the Market Operator (MO).
Of this total amount, the DisCos collectively remitted N414.26 billion, broken down as N354.77 billion to NBET and N59.49 billion to the MO, leaving an outstanding balance of N17.87 billion. This translates to a remittance performance of 95.86% in Q1 2025, an improvement over the 92.68% recorded in Q4 2024, NERC noted.
More insights
NERC noted that, in Q1 2025, the six international bilateral customers purchasing power from the grid-connected GenCos made a cumulative payment of $5.80 million against the $17.24 million invoice issued to them by the MO for services rendered in 2025/Q1 (remittance rate – 33.70%).
Also, domestic bilateral customers made a cumulative payment of N1.86 billion against the N2.6 billion invoice issued to them by the MO for services rendered in Q1 2025.
