PANAJI
Against the proposed hike of 6 per cent in power tariff for the current financial year, the State government has notified a hike of 5.19 per cent. The notification comes after approval from the Joint Electricity Regulatory Commission (JERC) in a bid to further reduce its dependence on budgetary support from the State government.
The order comes into force with effect from April 1, 2023.
The Department in its submission to the Commission had clarified that in the domestic category, Goa's power tariff is less compared to the neighbouring states. The State government did not increase the tariff and continued to levy the tariff approved by the Commission in 2019-20 for the next two financial years allowing the consumers to revive from Covid-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, the Commission also approved the Average Billing Rate (ABR) of Rs 5.04/kWh against the approved Average Cost of Supply (ACoS) of Rs 5.87/kWh.
"The entire revenue gap shall be met through the budgetary support as per assurance letter of the Government of Goa dated January 24, 2023. The Commission acknowledges this letter of assurance from the Government of Goa towards meeting any prospective revenue gap for FY 2023-24, and hence the revenue gap for FY 2023-24 has been considered as NIL," it said.
The Commission has rationalised the tariff levels for cross-subsidised categories by marginally higher than the average hike and has reduced/maintained the tariff levels at lower than average tariff hike for cross-subsidising categories.
The ABR without the Government Budgetary support has been calculated considering the per unit gap of Rs 0.83/kWh (difference between ACoS and ABR at Approved Tariff with Govt Budgetary Support). The Commission highlighted that in case this gap had to be entirely fulfilled by revenue from consumers then it would have demanded an additional average tariff increase of 16.47 per cent.
The JERC in February held a public hearing on several petitions by the department which included the 6 per cent hike, and it was opposed by the stakeholders. The hike was to partially bridge the huge revenue gap and to avoid the tariff shock to consumers.
