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A day after the polling to the Lok Sabha elections got over in Gujarat on April 30, the state electricity regulator, Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission (GERC) has allowed power tariff hike on the consumers in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar and Surat effective from May 1. In its order on Monday, the GERC stated that it has allowed an increase of average 44 paise (INR 0.44) per unit to the private power producer, Torrent Power Ltd. This will result in the annual burden of INR 449 crore on the consumers in the three urban centres.

The tariff increase includes the increase in fixed charges and energy charges. According to GERC statement, Torrent Power in its petition for truing up for FY-2012-13 had claimed consolidated revenue gap of INR 1,221 crore and had asked for overall increase of INR 1.22 per unit in retail tariff to recover the gap.

However, the commission arrived at a consolidated gap of INR 461 crore and decided to address the said gap by increasing tariff by about 44 paisa per unit. According to GERC sources, Torrent Power was faced with shortage of fuel for its gas-based power plants, part of which remained non-operational. “They had to purchase power from outside. This joined with the fixed costs of the power plants resulted in the revenue gap for the company. Therefore, the commission allowed INR 0.44 per unit of increase,” the source said.

Notably, tariff for BPL category consumers, agriculture consumers and residential consumers using electricity up to 50 units per month is not increased. Meanwhile, there was no increase in tariff for the four state utilities.

The companies had filed petitions before the regulator for Mid-term review of business plan for fiscal 2014-15 and fiscal 2015-16 and petitions for truing-up of fiscal 2012-13 and for determination of tariff for fiscal 2013-14 along with Audited Accounts under the GERC Multi-Year Tariff (MYT) Regulations.

Source-On Request