Punjab power regulator on Monday left the consumers virtually shocked by announcing a hike of whopping 9.33 per cent over the existing tariff. The increase will come into effect from April 1, 2017, with the domestic consumers to shell out an additional tariff between seven and 12 per cent, and additional 8.50 to 10.50 per cent by the commercial consumers.
To decipher it further, for every Rs 100, power consumers will now end up paying an additional Rs 9.33 since April this year. With this, here will be an additional burden of Rs 2,522 crore on the State's power consumers.
As the rates will be applicable with a retrospective effect, the consumers will have to pay the "outstanding" amount from April to November in nine instalments. The tariff has been announced for a period of next three years.
Justifying the hike, the Punjab State Power Regulatory Commission (PSERC) chairperson Kusumjit Sidhu said the State power utility, Punjab State Power Corporation limited (PSPCl), was burdened as there was no increase in the power rates since past three years.
Sidhu said PSPCl's consolidated gap was worked out at Rs 2,522.62 crore against power utility's proposal of Rs 11,575.53 crore.
"To cover this revenue gap for financial year 2017-18, an overall increase of 9.33 per cent is required over the existing tariff," said Sidhu while announcing the multi-year tariff for the year 2017-18 to 2019-20.
Even as Rs 5 per unit power tariff has been approved for the industrial sector, the regulator will calculate the subsidy after the implementation of new rates by the Government. As per the tariff order released on Monday, the new rates on the industry have been fixed from Rs 6.12 to Rs 7.46.
The Commission has implemented a two-part tariff structure for all consumers except for agriculture sector, which includes a fixed charge and a variable charge. This has been done to implement the National Tariff Policy, said Sidhu.
Within two-part tariff structure, the Commission has decided to have a reduced variable energy charges for incremental consumption above the highest limit achieved in last two years.
PSERC has done away with 10 paise surcharge for continuous process industry. Besides, Re one rebate provided to the industrial sector for increasing the electricity consumption as Time of Day (ToD) has been increased to Rs 1.25 per KVAh.
Time of Day tariff has also been extended to non-residential supply or bulk supply consumers, she said, adding that the power incentive will be effective from November month.
As per the new rates, the domestic consumer will have to pay an additional 41 to 80 paisa per unit, while commercial consumers have to pay 70 to 72 paise per unit more as tariff.
The tariff increase for industrial consumers is between 54 to 71 paise per unit which will be subsidised by the Government.
Under the multi-year tariff (MYT) regime which has been announced for the first time, the controllable and normative components of annual revenue requirement has been determined and fixed for the control period, she said.
The total income from the new tariff for PSPCl has been worked out at Rs 28,910 crore, Rs 30,241 crore and Rs 31,739 crore for 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 respectively.
Power subsidy to cross Rs 10,000 crore mark
The total power subsidy to the farmers, backward classes, scheduled castes, among others, for the year 2017-18 is set to cross Rs 10,000 crore-mark. The figure would be much higher as the state power regulator is yet to calculate the subsidy provided to the industrial sector with the Government fixing Rs 5 per unit tariff for the same. As per the new power tariff, the power subsidy burden has been estimated at Rs 10,970 crore including free power to farmers and arrears of Rs 2,800 crore.
The Rs 10,970 crore figure does not include the subsidised power to industrial category which was to be worked out after implementation of new rates.