HYDERABAD:In a significant development, the World Bank has agreed to provide Rs 2,400 crore financial aid to cash-starved Andhra Pradesh for strengthening power sector in the State by introducing reforms at all levels.
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has also sanctioned around Rs 295 crore for the implementation of High Voltage Distribution System (HVDS) project to reduce distribution losses and provide quality power supply to the agriculture sector in the State.
Following this, in order to provide quality power supply to consumers, the State government is planning to invest around Rs 27,000 crore in the power sector in the coming years.
These details were disclosed on Sunday by Chairman & Managing Director of APTransco K Vijayanand during a review of power situation in the State with senior officials of the energy department.
On the request of the Centre and the AP government, the World Bank had agreed to sanction Rs 2,400 crore to AP to take up reforms in the power sector. The power saving reforms adopted by the State power utilities had helped save Rs 1,950 crore of Transmission & Distribution (T&D) losses in the last 18 months, he said.
“Implementation of an action plan led to reduction of T&D losses from 17.05 per cent in 2010-11 to 10.54 per cent now, a drop of 6.51 pc by August 2015,” he claimed.
A road map has been made to further cut the T&D loses to a single digit by 2016-17 on a par with the advanced countries like the US, UK, South Korea and France.