Power regulator Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission (DERC) on Thursday announced a cross-sector power tariff hike of 8.32 per cent. While doing so, it also approved regulatory assets worth Rs 13,670 crore till the financial year 2012-13 which earlier stood at Rs 11,431 crore. With the new tariff order the, discoms would recover as much as Rs 1,245 core in this financial year itself.
The hike has come as a part of the DERC’s roadmap to recovery of past regulatory assets. City dwellers will have to continue to pay the 8 per cent surcharge levied on power bills. This was to help the discoms recover past dues, explained DERC officials. “Since we did not want domestic consumers to pay more for power bills, we had to find alternate ways. We have primarily done two things to recover the past accumulated assets. Firstly, we decided to continue the 8 per cent surcharge. Secondly, we increased per unit charges or energy charges by an average of 2.5 per cent. All this was done while the Power Purchase Adjustment Cost (PPAC) was waived for three months so that people are not burdened with exuberant bills,” explained PD Sudhakar, chairman, DERC.
If tariff hikes are done at the same rate every year then the regulatory assets are expected to get balanced by the year 2019-20, said officials. The total past dues of the discoms have been estimated at Rs 13,670 crore. In financial year 2014-15, the three discoms have been approved a total revenue of Rs 17,613 crore against their demand of Rs 20,968 crore.
The 8 per cent surcharge on the revised tariff is estimated to result in an additional inflow of Rs.1386 Crore for all the three discoms, which will partly liquidate the accumulated revenue gap till financial year 2012-13 of Rs 13,670 crore. “Further, introduction of 8 per cent surcharge for NDMC will result into estimated additional inflow of Rs 67 Crore for remaining 8.5 months which will partly liquidate its principal amount of accumulated Revenue Gap of Rs 324 crore,” said a DERC official.