Amidst inflation crossing 11% mark, consumers in Punjab may have to shell out more in terms of their electricity bills, if Punjab State Electricity Regulatory Commission goes with its proposed plans to hike rates.
Sources in the the Commission told FE on Thursday that the hike is likely to be announced on Friday. It is learnt that the Punjab State Electricity Board has already filed an aggregate revenue requirement (ARR) and retail tariff petition for 2008-09 with the State Regulatory Commission to hike the power tariff.
The hike is likely to be between 2 to 2.4%, highly placed sources revealed. However it might be from retrospective effect from April 2008.
It may be recalled that last year the commission had ordered 4% hike, which actually turned out to be 8% due to annualisation exercise.The Commission decision comes in the wake of a communication from Punjab government on the pending subsidy bill. In the communication to commission, the state government has confirmed its commitment to clear the outstanding power subsidy bill.
It is learnt that the annual subsidy on power comes to about Rs 2,500 crores. Punjab government is likely to clear subsidy arrears in instalments and not in one go.
It was also learnt that as per the ARR filed with the PSERC, against an expected annual expenditure of Rs 13513.24 crore, the PSEB would earn a revenue of Rs 9103.02 crore from the sale of energy at the existing tariff and another Rs 2500 crore from power subsidy to agriculture and other sectors. Sources said that the cumulative gap would be of Rs 5000 crore. This had necessitated an increase in power tariff.