Discoms' dues mount to Rs 6,000 crores

Discoms dues mount to Rs 6,000 crores
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The dues owed to power generation companies have been becoming big burden to the power distribution companies of the State as they are not cleared regularly.

Hyderabad: The dues owed to power generation companies have been becoming big burden to the power distribution companies of the State as they are not cleared regularly.

According to the reports of the Central Electricity Authority, the dues owed to Central Public Sector Undertaking (CPSU) reached to Rs 3,034 crores by end of October.

The dues owed to the CPSUs were Rs 2,980 crores and they have grown by Rs 64 crores from September to October. The Southern and Northern Power Distribution companies owe about Rs 1,771 crores to the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) in October.

Apart from the NTPC, they have to pay Rs 339 crores to the Power Grid Corporation, Rs 192 crores to the Nuclear Power Corporation and Rs 392 crores to the Neyveli Power Corporation.

They already have a due of Rs 824 crores to the private power generation companies and Rs 2,000 crores to the non-conventional energy generation companies. If all these dues are put together then total reaches Rs 6,000 crores.

As the Centre has made it mandatory to the distribution companies to get Letter of Credit (LC) from the banks, the dues to the private generation companies have come down since August.

According to sources, the Discoms were unable to clear the dues in time as their revenue is low. They were unable to realise the amounts being payable by the government departments.

They have dues of about Rs 5,000 crores from the government departments. As the power tariffs were not revised for the last two years, the gap between the revenue and the expenditure has been growing.

Sources in the distribution companies said that as they were not allowed to collect the dues from the government departments and not to raise the tariffs, the dues would grow in the coming months.

Though the State government has been giving some subsidies to the distribution companies, they would not bridge the gap between the revenue and the expenditure.

In order to maintain a healthy financial condition, the Discoms have to raise the tariffs or they should get more subsidies from the government. They have been asking the State government to bail them out of the financial issues.

The State government has to take a decision on raising the subsidies or allowing the Discoms to raise the tariffs. In fact, the government has to inform its decision to the Discoms in November itself.

The Discoms have to submit the Aggregate Revenue Requirement (ARR) report to the Telangana State Electricity Regulatory Commission by end of November which indicates how they would get their revenues.

As the government did not inform its decision on subsidies and tariffs, they have sought more time to submit the ARR.

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