Proposes MYT hike of 6%, 4%, 2%; No change in agri tariff.
Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Ltd (GUVNL) today filed a petition demanding a hike in power tariff of 6 percent in the 2008-09 fiscal.
As per an Annual Revenue Requirement petition filed by GUVNL to the regulator Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC), the state-owned power company shown a gap of Rs 1200 crore over the next three years.
To meet this, GUVNL has proposed a multi-year tariff revision of 6%, 4% and 2% for the year 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11, respectively.
The overall increase in the average revenue realization for all tariff categories is estimated to be 38 paise per unit over a three year period.
However, there will not be any additional burden on agricultural consumers, according to the petition. If this petition gets approval of GERC, about 80 lakh consumers, including domestic, commercial and industrial will be impacted.
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The power tariff regime in Gujarat has remained fairly stable with hardly any tariff increase being implemented in the last seven years. The last time there was an increase in the tariff rates in the retail tariff schedule was in FY 2000-01.
Since then, the company has been able to absorb the significant increase in its power purchase cost and other expenses by continuously improving its performance parameters, especially its distribution losses and an improving consumption mix.
The company has also been able to post a marginal profit in the past two years, the petition said.
There has been an additional burden of Rs 322 crore on the company due to rising coal and oil prices besides an additional burden of over Rs 600 crore due to non-availability of contracted gas and purchase of gas at spot price.
As part of the "Golden Goals" targets set by the state government, the power distributing companies (Discoms) have to issue new connections to all BPL households in the coming years at the rate of about 2.5 lakh connections per year across Gujarat.
The company plans to issue over 2.7 lakh connections to these consumers over the control period. It has been assumed that the state government shall provide a 100 % grant for funding the capital expenditure required under this programme MYT proposal for first control period (2008-09, 2009-10 & 2010-11) under funds already budgeted by them under various schemes.
The projections for the number of units sold are based on the anticipated capacity required by the three licensees. GUVNL anticipates that AEC and SEC shall reduce their offtake from GUVNL as their own generation plant shall come online from FY 2008-09 onwards.
Based on this the units sold to them have been reduced on a pro rata basis to their allocated capacity for the particular year compared to the projected sale in 2007-08.
However, it has also been assumed that GUVNL shall be able to find a suitable replacement for the quantum of energy not offtaken by AEC and SEC from the projected levels of 2007-08, the company said.
The sale of this energy has been assumed to be at the cost plus a trading margin of 4 paise per unit. The power purchase cost has been calculated as per the parameters proposed by GSECL in its tariff petition for the stations allocated to GUVNL.
The employee expenses of GUVNL have been escalated by 10% while the A&G expenses have been escalated at 5% year on year.