Power tariff hike on the cards

HYDERABAD: Contrary to the claims made by the government and the power utilities, a hike in the domestic power tariff is not ruled out as the AP electricity regulatory committee feels that the power utilities will not be able to bridge the revenue deficit gap as per the annual revenue receipt (ARR) proposals they have submitted to the committee.
The power utilities have proposed a hike in the tariff for railways, commercial establishments and industrial sector and wanted to collect fuel surcharge adjustment from domestic users from July 1.
According to the report the power utilities have submitted to the APERC, the deficit in revenue minus the earnings from hike in power tariff is likely to be around Rs 10,617 crore.
The utilities would get Rs 4,500 crore reimbursement from the government for free power supply. Still the deficit would be around Rs 6117 crore. Added to this, they will have to spend an additional Rs 530 crore as the Centre has hiked the sale price of gas-based power.
Under the circumstances, the APERC which would give its final order on the ARR towards third week of July could ask the utilities to hike power tariff for the domestic sector as well. In such a case either the government will have to bear the additional burden or allow the utilities to recover the same from the consumers.
Since the government’s financial position is not very rosy, the possibility of allowing the utilities to collect it from the domestic consumers appears to be imminent, sources feel. The hike could be in the form of “tariff rationalisation,” which means that there could be some reclassification of the various slabs and the tariff would be decided accordingly. Meanwhile, efforts are on to segregate the agriculture power users from the domestic users.
The new scheme would now be implemented as a pilot project in one mandal of each district under the central discom.Under this scheme there would be separate agriculture feeders in villages and every feeder would have auto meter facility.