A cross-section of the participants at today's public hearing held by the Andhra Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commission (APERC), on the Annual Revenue Requirement (ARR) proposals of APTransco for the next fiscal, made a strong appeal to APERC to thoroughly examine the various cost structures put forth by Transco to avoid unnecessary burden on consumers, even as Transco proposed no hike in tariff for the year.
Making a detailed presentation on the ARR for 2003-03, Rachel Chatterjee, the CMD of APTransco, said the power sector utilities in AP were achieving overall progress in the post-reform era.
Touching upon the performance of APTransco during the current fiscal, she said that but for the adversities in the form of monsoons failure,drastic reduction in hydel power generation, excess power consumption by agriculture sector, lower inter-state sales and employee wage revision, Transco would have ended up with a surplus.
She said revenue realisation would be higher by 10.5 per cent (Rs 748 crore) at Rs 7,987 crore as metered sales including industrial and commercial would go up. T&D losses were proposed to be brought down to 24.8 per cent from 27.6 per cent in the current year.
The Transco CMD projected a lower power purchase cost at Rs 1.79 per unit, as against Rs 1.86 in the current year, on assumption of higher hydel power availability and lower fixed cost by APGenco to the tune of Rs 140 crore. Overall, the revenue gap for the year was projected at Rs 1,501 crore, to be bridged with subsidy by the state government.
Stressing the need for judicious spending in all the investments proposed, M V Mysoora Reddy, the Congress MLA, said the fixed costs of all the power producers including APGenco need to be reviewed by the commission to fix reasonable power tariff for the consumer. He felt that the rampant corruption in APTransco, APGenco and distribution companies (Discoms) was causing additional burden on the consumers.
Expressing serious doubts on the effective utilisation of investments by Transco, Reddy suggested that the regulator look into even micro-level aspects such as value of the contracts fixed at the time of awarding and the excess payments made in the form of supplementary items after the completion of works. Making out an example, he said that when a transmission line contract was awarded at the rate of Rs 50,000 per km, the same work was finally executed by a second-level sub-contractor at the rate of Rs 14,000 per km.
Finding fault with Transco for paying a commission of Rs 5 for each bill collected by e-Seva counters, Mysoora Reddy said that ultimately the consumer had to bear this burden too. Even the subsidy that is being paid by the state government to APTransco is also a public money and there is a need for judicious spending of every rupee, he observed.
Drawing the attention of the regulator to various functional aspects of APTransco, B V Raghavulu of CPI(M) and Venugopala Rao of Prjasakthi daily news paper said that by rationalising the power purchases-- by avoiding high-cost purchases and opting for lower cost purchases -- the overall cost of purchases to meet the demand could be reduced to the tune of Rs 1,367 crore in the next fiscal.
Appealing to the regulator not to accept the Rs 813 crore revenue gap as regulatory asset as sought by APTransco, they also urged the commission not to allow concealed hike in tariff and direct the utilities to show any one-time adjustments separately in the power bills.
Raghavulu felt that any move to privatise the distribution sector should be first discussed at a public hearing by the commission, since distribution is a key area of reforms. He implored the commission not to allow the ongoing privatisation initiatives at 33 KV sub-station level before went through a public hearing.
Venugopala Rao urged APERC not to entertain the non-conventional energy producers by paying Rs 3.40 per unit , since they already enjoy huge capital subsidies from the central government.
Making out a case for lower tariff for railways, compared to the current tariff of Rs 4.60 per unit, Prajapati, a senior executive of SCR, said that being a bulk consumer availing power at extra high-voltage and promptly paying the bills, it deserved some benefit.
Since Ferro alloy units, being power-intensive industries, avail of power at Rs 2.12 per unit as per the direction of the regulator, the railways too should be supplied power at the rate of Rs 2.62 per unit, which is still higher than the cost-to-serve price of Rs 2.26 per unit, he said.
