Power supply: FG secures $170m loan from French agency

The federal government has said it secured a loan of $170 million from the French Development Agency to be used to facilitate the transmission of transformers from Siemens under the Presidential Power Initiative (PPI) in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja.

This was stated by the Minister of Power, Abubakar Aliyu, during the inspection of transmission projects in the FCT last weekend.

Aliyu said the government was poised to improve the transmission capacity of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) with an additional 1000MW through the Abuja Ring Project.

He noted the projects which were significantly made up of lines and substations, adding that some engineers would be going to France before the end of the month to do a factory test on some transformers.

He said: “The project is about six and they are over 90 per cent completed and hope to be completed November, December. The contractor is chasing the completion date and when completed it will increase power supply in Abuja and environ.

“This project is funded by a loan of $170million dollars from the French Development Agency (AFD) and started by President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration in 2018 in the quest to increase the capacity of the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry (NESI).” (Ripples Nigeria)