PHD CCI hails no hike in power tariff

The industry appreciated the announcement made by Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission (PSERC) for no hike in power tariff for various category consumers, said Shri Amarjit Goyal, Chairman, Punjab Committee, PHDCCI. He said that PSEB in its submission proposed a hike of more than 17% in the power tariff to all the categories of consumer in its Annual Revenue Requirement (ARR) for this financial year. He said that PHDCCI had strongly opposed the same through a petition filed before PSERC and termed it as totally irrational.

He said that since Punjab was a land locked area, it was only the low power tariff that might work in sustaining industrial growth and further investments. Moreover, the Power Intensive Units (PIUs) could only survive with rational power cost which makes it necessary to lower down the tariff by reducing the average power cost per unit.

About open access, Mr. Goyal said that Indian Electricity Act 2003 lays stress on promotion of open access, co-generation and captive generation. The present policies of the Board were discouraging the consumers to opt for open access as the billing charges and the losses being demanded were so prohibitive that open access is not viable.

Mr. R S Sachdeva, Co-Chairman, Punjab Committee PHDCCI said that the PSEB is not efficiently managing their finances; if managed properly the board could be in surplus and would have not needed any power hike. The Chamber had recommended various measures for reducing the expenses. He pointed out that Rs. 330 crore were shown as expenditure on establishment which was above the approved amount and the board further proposed 20% hike in the ARR for 2006-07. He said that this needs to be pegged as it has direct effect on the tariff.

Mr. Goyal said Commission should also ban purchase of power from costly sources. Further, he said, there was a scope of reducing this by about 900 crores by maximizing generation at thermal plants. It was surprising to see that when dams are full upto the brim, generation from hydro plants had shown a reduction of about 20%. There was no justification in allowing the purchase of such a huge amount, he added.

He added that debt servicing cost was Rs. 1200 crores, an increase by 20% over the last year. Moreover, release of tubewells was an ongoing process and every year around 40000 tubewells were released and subsidy with respect to free supply was not fully compensated by the government making direct burden on the industry consumers.
About reduction in transmission and distribution losses, he said that PSEB had proposed to reduce T&D losses from 24.27 % in the year 04-05 to 23% in 06-07, but no action plan with regards to reduction in T&D losses was submitted by PSEB. He said that the Chamber had emphasized that the earlier directions of the Commission to reduce the losses to 22% as per their previous orders should be complied with. The transit loss of coal should also be pegged at 2% and the station heat rate be also brought down to 2500 kilo calories per unit against present level of 2800 K. calories, recommended PHDCCI