Team Herald
PANJIM: Giving major relief to over 65,000 domestic consumers, the Electricity Department (ED) has proposed reduction in power tariff, where consumers with a monthly consumption of 200 to 300 units will be charged Rs 2.40 per unit as against the current price of Rs 3.10 per unit from the financial year 2016-17.
In a further relaxation, ED has proposed dropping monthly minimum charges (MMC) for all consumers. However, to ensure that there is no misuse of this, owners of premises or flats that are closed or locked for a period of more than three months and having sanctioned or connected load more than 10 KW, will have to shell out MMC of Rs 1000.
The biggest beneficiaries of the proposed MMC removal will be those from the low income group and owners who leave their flats vacant and were forced to pay higher minimum charges monthly despite their low consumption.
“Considering consumer suggestions at the previous public hearing, ED has proposed to remove MMC for all categories. This will benefit low income group people, who are forced to pay high MMC,” Chief Electricity Engineer Deepak Bhokekar said in a petition submitted to the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC).
Currently, MMC charges range between Rs 200 and Rs 300 per month. The new tariff rates would be applicable only after clearance from JERC, which is expected to come by the end of this month.
The ED in its petition to JERC proposed reduction in tariff to consumers with power consumption up to 500 units per month and recommended 10 per cent hike in the industrial sector.
“The petitioner has proposed marginal tariff increase in certain categories corresponding to the cost increases in power purchase, transmission charges and operation and maintenance expenses,” ED said at a public hearing called by the JERC on Wednesday and chaired by JERC Chairman SK Chaturvedi.
As per the petition, power consumers within the slab of 400 to 500 units per month will be charged Rs 3.20 per unit as against Rs 3.60 per unit. ED has also hiked the power tariff of the Defence units from Rs 3.20 per unit to Rs 5.0 per unit.
“The additional revenue expected through this proposed tariff hike is Rs 77.01 crore annually,” Bhojekar said. He added that while rationalising power tariff for domestic consumers, the decision to hike it for high tension supply consumers was to fill the revenue gap which is projected at Rs 405.82cr for the FY 2016-17.
The revenue gap for the FY 2015-16 stands at Rs 135.53 crore and the projected gap for FY 2016-17 is Rs 270.28 crore. “The recovery of entire gap of Rs 405.82 crore during FY 2016-17 will lead to tariff shock to consumers and therefore it is not viable to recover the entire gap in one year. Therefore, ED proposed a marginal average increase in revenue of around 5 per cent through revision in tariffs,” the petition states.
