Hyderabad: The state energy and finance departments have failed to reach consensus over power subsidy for 2017-18. The energy department had asked the finance department for Rs 8,000 crore subsidy for the ensuing year since it expects it would have to purchase more power since the agriculture sector would be using more due to availability of groundwater.
The energy department estimates that it would have to purchase about 9500 MW in the next year. Saying that the state’s revenue had come down due to demonetisation, finance department officials said that they were not in a position to allot Rs 8,000 crore subsidy.
Apart from the note ban, revenue will be hit in the next year due to the Supreme Court orders on liquor shops on the highway and in the initial stages of the implementation of GST, the finance wings officials said.
The energy department has estimated that Rs 31,984 crore would be needed next year and the revenue gap would be about Rs 8,000 crore. While the subsidy given to the energy department in the present year is Rs 4,500 crore, the officials are hoping that the government would increase it by at least Rs 2,000 crore more, if not take care of the entire burden altogether. Meanwhile, the TS Electricity Regulatory Commission has given February 23 as the deadline to file the new tariff proposals.
