APTransco gets nod to collect fuel surcharge

To collect Rs 92 crore

The Andhra Pradesh Transmission Corporation (APTransco) will collect close to Rs 92 crore more from power consumers in the state on account of an increase in fuel costs.

The state government on Tuesday gave the green signal to APTransco to go ahead with the mandatory fuel surcharge adjustment (FSA), a norm which the previous Telugu Desam government had deviated from due to the Assembly elections.

The Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (Aperc) had on July 27 directed APTransco to implement the FSA with immediate effect.

The amount of Rs 92 crore was the extra cost that the corporation incurred in supplying power during the previous financial year and also during the first month of the current fiscal.

Electricity consumers in the state will now have to pay 8.34 paise extra on each unit they consume for the next six months, starting September this year.

According to the Aperc order, any cost escalation on account of uncontrolled factors like hike in fuel costs in between tariff revisions will have to be transferred to the consumers through power bills as FSA.

The Chandrababu Naidu government deviated from its earlier practice of allowing the FSA to come into play and had not allowed APTransco to pass on the additional costs to consumers because of the Assembly elections.

The Y S Rajasekhara Reddy government, which was undecided on the issue initially, has had to take a decision when APTransco recently approached it following Aperc's latest diktat.

The government finally decided to allow the power utility to pass on the burden of Rs 92 crore to consumers in a high-level meeting chaired by the chief minister.

"While asking APTransco to go ahead with the fuel surcharge adjustment, the government instructed the power utility to collect the above amount in six monthly installments, instead of burdening the consumer with a single-time levy," D K Panwar, principal secretary of state energy department who is also holding additional charge of CMD of APTransco, told Business Standard.