The good news first: With the linking of the southern power grid with the national power grid, Andhra Pradesh can procure at least 500 MW of additional power from surplus states such as Punjab and Haryana. The bad news: the state government is preparing the ground for a new round of power tariff hikes. This will come on top of the three power tariff hikes in the last two years, which have resulted in the doubling of tariff.
Consumers have also been slapped additional surcharges a staggering 11 times in the last five years under the guise of fuel surcharge adjustment (FSA). In essence, this is the fee levied on hapless consumers for buying power at higher rates. “After all there is no Kejriwal here,” rued a hapless housewife, Rekha Rao.
Kejriwal has slashed power tariff in Delhi by 50% for those who consume less than 400 units per month. Experts assert that Andhra Pradesh, which provides free power to farmers can certainly slash power tariff by 50% for Greater Hyderabad’s domestic consumers. The high tariff is because of mismanagement and the penchant of successive state government to ensure high financial benefits for private power producers passing on the burden to the common consumer.
“Electricity tariff in AP is very high because of the inherent deficiencies. The transmission & distribution (T&D) losses are as much as 18.1% in Greater Hyderabad and a systematic monitoring can stop technical inefficiencies and theft of electricity,” said former Union power secretary EAS Sarma.
Incidentally, Delhi and the Greater Hyderabad region share similar dynamics when it comes to power consumption. The Aam Aadmi government will now bear a subsidy burden of Rs 800 crore to slash the power tariff of nearly 28 lakh consumers in Delhi. For the state government to provide 50% concession to 28.5 lakh consumers (who consume below 400 units) in the Greater Hyderabad areas, the cost would be Rs 350 crore.
The state government is already paying Rs 5,533 crore power subsidy (per year) and crediting the money directly into the accounts of distribution companies (who buy power and distribute it). Of this, Rs 3,631 crore is being spent for providing free power to the farm sector. The domestic sector (including all categories) is getting Rs 1,902 crore subsidy from the government, which benefits lower consumption groups. ‘Power theft causing govt 300 cr loss’
For example, consumers who use less than 50 units are getting power at Rs 1.45 per unit though the actual cost is Rs 3.60 per unit. By way of cross subsidy, the government is charging more from the industrial and commercial category consumers.
So who is going to bear the burden of extra subsidy of Rs 350 crore if tariffs are slashed by 50% in Greater Hyderabad? “The need of the hour is to plug theft and pilferage in Greater Hyderabad, which result in a loss of Rs 300 crore,” says a top official of the energy department not ready to be named.
“Making basic needs such as power affordable to people is the need of the hour,” asserts M Venugopala Rao, convener, Centre of Power Studies, Hyderabad.
“APGENCO, private generation companies, Transco and the distribution companies are all monopolies not accountable to the public. There are significant inefficiencies in their operations. An independent performance audit by CAG will bring to light those inefficiencies, which if corrected, can help reduce the unit cost and the tariff for consumers,” said Sarma.
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