Slow disbursals and challenging preconditions of the Central government’s Atmanirbhar package for state energy distribution businesses (discoms) have resulted in a sharp rise in outstanding dues of the Uttar Pradesh discoms to generation businesses.
The Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation (UPPCL) discoms’ overdues to generation businesses stand at Rs 26,000 crore as on January 31, 2021. Of this, dues of IPPs stand at about Rs 12,000 crore when these of central PSUs are about Rs 10,000 crore. Apart from this, the renewable power producers have pending bills of Rs 1,000 crore.
According to senior officials of UPPCL, this quantity does not involve the Rs 15,000 crore dues of state PSUs, which are not covered in the package.
“UPPCL has already submitted its action plan for the second tranche to the government of India, but it has not been cleared yet. In fact, none of the states have been able to clear their action plans yet and no disbursements have been made so far,” stated the official, adding that the delay is resulting in an added burden of Rs 6 crore of interest per day to UPPCL, which will lastly be passed on to the shoppers.
“Till March 2020, UP’s power purchase dues to CPSUs and IPPs amounted to Rs 21,000 crore, against which the Centre released the first tranche of payment of Rs 10,500 crore, leaving a balance of Rs 10,500 crore. When the scheme was extended till June 2020, we submitted a fresh requirement of Rs 12,983 crore, which too, will be payable by the Centre in two tranches. While we have submitted the action plan for the second tranche of Rs 10,500 crore, we have requested the Centre to at least clear the first tranche of the April-June period, since the action plan for that is similar to the first tranche that has already been cleared. That way, we will be able to clear approximately Rs 6,500 crore to the gencos,” the official stated on situation of anonymity.
The central government had initially announced the Rs 94,000-crore Atmanirbhar scheme for ailing discoms till March 2020, which was then extended to Rs 1.25 lakh crore till June 2020. According to reports, when loans to discoms have been sanctioned to the complete extent, disbursals have only touched Rs 46,one hundred crore.
When contacted, an official of the Union energy ministry confirmed the receipt of UP action program for second tranche and stated that the ministry will quickly be calling the UPPCL group for a presentation just before Union energy minister RK Singh.
“We have asked UPPCL for some additional information regarding the budgeting of subsidies and a quarterly roadmap for liquidating the arrears by three years. In fact, we are calling all the states for a presentation with the minister in order to get a sense of what they are saying. While Rajasthan, Manipur, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have already made presentations, our attempt is to call the remaining states in the next week and clear their proposal by March,” he stated.
UP discoms’ overdues — bills that remained unpaid for more than 60 days — have been increasing virtually relentlessly, chiefly since of operational inefficiencies, which includes the discoms’ inability to minimize AT&C losses and the gap among the typical price of provide (ACS) and the typical income realisation (ARR). While the AT&C losses stand at a whopping 30.30% in 2019-2020, as against the Uday target of 14.86%, the ACS-ARR gap stands at Rs .07 per kWh against the target of .06/kWh.