Palliatives now after power tariff shock

HYDERABAD: After a rude power 'shock' administered by the Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (APERC), AP Transmission Corporation chairman and managing director Ajay Jain on Saturday tried to keep consumers in good humour by saying that around 1.42 crore consumers _ 57 per cent of the total number _ would not be affected by the tariff hike.

During an informal chat with reporters, Jain announced that there would be no power cuts to small-scale industries from Sunday and that the power utility was expecting no additional charges on purchasing power.

In such a case, there would be no fuel adjustment surcharge (FAS) for consumers for the current year.

Some paltry amount may even be returned to the consumers.

He claims the revised tariff is still lower than that in southern states.

Jain said the state government allowed the power utility to buy `200 crore worth gas from Reliance so that an additional 220 MW to 250 MW power could be generated from gas-based thermal stations from Sunday.

This would help the utility to cancel the two-day power cuts to small industries.

Now, power cut would be only for one day in a week.

The purchase of gas from Reliance would be only for one month.

Jain also said that besides the tariff hike, the government also made its commitment to pay  Rs 5,358 crore subsidy for both agriculture and low-tension power domestic consumers.

Justifying the tariff hike, Jain said the cost to serve (CoS), which was  Rs3.18 a unit in 2004, is Rs 4.42 now.

The realisation from consumers was Rs 2.59 in 2004 and it was  Rs2.99 now.

On the other hand, the power purchase cost went up to  Rs3.05 now from  Rs1.81 in 2004.

The increase in coal cost was also high, he said.