H1 2017 records drop in MSMEs growth as power supply weakens
The productive scale of Nigeria’s micro Medium and Small Scale Enterprises (MSMEs), with higher dependence on public power supply weakened in the first quarter 2017, occasioned by poor power supply.
This was reflected in the new pool conducted by the NO1 poll, which was released to the public on Tuesday, July12,th 2017, for the six months period ended 30th June, 2017.
New aggregated power poll results released by NO1Poll for the 1st half of 2017 , covering January to June ( covering Q1 and Q2), revealed a decline in power supply to Nigerian households in Q2.
The survey poll showed that an average of 31 per cent of Nigerians surveyed reported the decline in power supply for the first half of this year; the drop signified a 6-point waning compared to the fourth quarter (Q4) 2016, which stood at 37 per cent.
The drop, experts said, could be attributed to the reported shortage of gas supply experienced by the sector several months back and the grid instability caused by weak transmission infrastructure.
The pool further showed that quarterly evaluation revealed that 31 per cent of adult Nigerians reported that they experienced a minimal increase in power supply to their households in Q2, 2017; and this represents a 1-point increase when compared to Q1, 2017 which stood at 30 percent.
Monthly analysis, according to the report, showed that the highest improvement in power supply was in the month of March 2017 with 35 percent representation while the month of January accounted for the lowest with 21 percent improvement in power supply in the first half of 2017.
In the same manner, an evaluation of the monthly average cumulative hours of power supply to Nigerian households for the month of February, 2017, stood at 9.8 hours daily, representing the highest daily cumulative hours of power supply within the six month period.
The NO1Poll Q2 report revealed that quarterly, nationwide average daily cumulative power supply to Nigerian households in Q2, 2017, stood at 9.3 hours, these results further stress the drop in power supply when compared to Q4, 2016, which had 10.6 hours as the monthly average.
The low power supply, according to No1 Polls, infers that the stakeholders in the power sector needs to keep up the pace of working towards providing more quality electricity supply to the people.
Meanwhile, cross section of experts who spoke to Daily Times on the implication of the poor power supply in Q2, said that overall, it impacted negatively on the economy and standard of living.
According to the experts, reduced power supply affects productivity, lifestyle, industries, homes, domestic uses, micro industries, and all MSME’s, as well as, increased running cost to established firms.
