Hyderabad: There is no tariff hike for domestic consumers in AP. There are three new categories of Group-A, B and C in domestic sector (in place of old slabwise domestic category) and all three have been exempted from the hike.
The tariff order approved by APERC comes into effect from April 1, 2016.
Only two per cent hike against four per cent proposed by Discoms for commercial and industrial consumers has been allowed by AP Electricity Regulatory Commission. The tariff increase will give an additional revenue of Rs 216 crore to the Discoms as against Rs 783 crore proposed by the Discoms.
APERC chairman Justice G. Bhavani Prasad said 96.6 per cent of the total 1.47 crore consumers are untouched by the hike. The average consumption limits of first two categories of domestic consumers have been liberally expanded, he said adding that the limits for LTI Domestic grouping have been revised upwards by 300 units/year for tariff classification that will keep approximately 21.58 lakh (of 117 lakh total) consumers from moving into higher tariff categories. He further said that tariff has been reduced from the existing levels for the Sugarcane crushing uni-ts and HT-IV Lift Irrigation.
The two per cent tariff hike is only for non-domestic consumers i.e. commercial establishments and industries. AP government has agreed to give '3,289 crore for power supply to agriculture sector,” he said.
Sharing the details of tariff order approved by the APERC, its chairman said the tariff hike is only 0.81 per cent as against 2.75 per cent proposed by the two Discoms in the state. While exempting all categories of domestic consumers fr-om a tariff hike, the APERC has also spared rural artisans and traditional occupations consuming up to 100 units, cottage and agrobased industries, NTR Sujala Padhakam, religious pla-ces with less than 2 KV load or less than 100 units consumption per month and railway traction.
The regulator created a separate category and reduced the existing tariffs for sugarcane crushing units, lift irrigation schemes, aquaculture and animal husbandry (pisciculture /prawn culture, poultry units and dairy farms), poultry hatcher-ies, religious places and energy intensive units such as ferro alloys units.
The regulator has allowed an energy subsidy of Rs 3,289 crore (only for agriculture) as against Rs 4,364 crore sought by the licensees. Keeping in view the AP governments move to join the Centre's UDAY scheme, the regulator refused to allow True Up charges (the additional amount incurred by power utilities for meeting the power supply requirement) claimed by the discoms.
"We have also reduce the tariff for lift irrigation schemes," Mr Bhavani Prasad said. While the discoms had indicated an annual revenue requirement of Rs 28,423 crore, the regulator slashed it by Rs 1,773 crore to Rs 26,649.98 crore.
The APERC has allowed power utilities to sell surplus power of 10,472 million units at Rs 4.29 per unit which will give them an additional revenue of Rs 4,492 crore. There will be no true up charges for Discoms for the 2014-15 and 2015-16, as such there would be no burden of true up charges in 2016-17 on the consumers.
However, a tariff hike during the middle of the 2016-17 financial year cannot be ruled out as cross subsidy surcharge and additional surcharge will be decided separately in view of the National Tariff Policy announced in January this year.
