Giving a relief to power consumers who consume less than 100 units a month, Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy on Monday announced an additional subsidy of Rs 175 crore.
Addressing a press conference on Monday at the State Secretariat, the Chief Minister said that the decision would benefit around 44.5 lakh consumers with a connected load of more than 500 Watt and consuming less than 100 units a month.
However, he defended the increase in power tariff and said it was inevitable. He also gave comparative figures to substantiate his defense.
The Chief Minister said that power tariff hike has affected many, but not all the consumers. Only 52 per cent of 190.1 lakh domestic consumers were affected due to the hike; 30 per cent of 18.6 lakh in commercial and 98 per cent of 31.1 lakh agriculture customers were affected.
He said during the year 2012-13, the government would be releasing a total subsidy of Rs 5,533 crore, including the Rs 175 crore subsidy announced on Monday. Of this, subsidy towards agriculture would be Rs 3,631 crore and subsidy towards domestic would be Rs 1,902 crore.
Kiran Kumar Reddy said that Andhra Pradesh was giving the highest power subsidy in the country. While Maharashtra is giving Rs 3,00 crore; Madhya Pradesh - Rs 1,445 crore; Tamil Nadu - Rs 4,294 crore; Karnataka - Rs 3,567 crore and Gujarat - Rs 1,100 crore, Andhra Pradesh Government is giving a subsidy of Rs 5,533 crore.
Giving reasons for power tariff hike, the Chief Minister said compared to 2003-04, the cost of domestic coal has gone up by 103 per cent, cost of gas by 93 per cent, Power Purchase cost by 68.5 per cent and Cost to Serve has increased by 39 per cent. Therefore, he said the hike in power tariff was inevitable.
Explaining the power supply position, the Chief Minister said that in the month of April the average supply was 253 MU as against the average demand of 292 MU per day.
Therefore, the deficit or gap was 39 MU per day. The deficit was three million units less than the previous month.
Kiran Kumar Reddy said various efforts were being made to bridge the gap between supply and demand.
Re-gasified Liquefied Natural Gas (RLNG) to an extent of 1.1 MMSCMD is being procured from GAIL at a cost of Rs 200 crore.
Additional 220 MW of power is being generated daily from April 1st onwards. This power is being given to small-scale industries.
The Chief Minister said that the fourth unit of Simhadri was synchronised with the Grid and achieved full load of 500 MW on March 30th. Jhajjar Unit of NTPC (230 MW) has been restored back on April 4th after a technical failure since February 17th.
The demand is slowly coming down and will reduce substantially from third week of April onwards. Power cuts to domestic and industrial sectors would be progressively lifted, he said.
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