MARGAO: The Government of India, the State of Goa and the DISCOMs of Goa Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) under the Scheme Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY).
Under UDAY, ten States have signed MoU till date.
On Thursday, Karnataka and Goa signed the MoU, making the total number of States covered under UDAY, twelve. The combined DISCOM debt (including CPSU dues) that would be restructured in respect of these States is around Rs 2.05 lakh crore, which is almost half of the total outstanding DISCOM debt as on September 30, 2015.
The Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana is a comprehensive power sector reform which is a voluntary scheme for the States to join in. The scheme will help the States with the Central government support to improve power availability and access of power to all the people of the country and to provide low cost power for all and reduce the losses without increasing the power tariffs.
While congratulating Goa for joining UDAY, Minister Piyush Goyal said, “Earlier the government’s thinking was to increase tariff if there are losses. The present thinking is to do a root cause analysis study and find out whether it can reduce the loss by means of better financial re-engineering and by reducing AT&C losses and power theft and also by improving infrastructure.”
“Our expectation is that through implementation of UDAY, we will save Rs 1.8 lakh crore in power sector alone. I am glad that two more States have signed the MOU,” the minister said. .
“The country produced about 1.1 lakh crore units of power and if we take an average of about Rs 4 per unit, then, it comes to Rs 4.40 lakh crore. One fourth of this is Rs 1.10 lakh crore which is a loss by various means. If we can bring it down to 15% which is a target we have set, then, we will save nearly Rs 40,000 crore,” the minister said.
The scheme would allow speedy availability of power to around 39 villages and 10.15 lakh households.
