Discoms suffered losses of Rs 80,000 Crore in FY’12: ICRA Report

28 Mar 2012 Evaluate

The power distribution companies (discoms) have suffered losses to the tune of whopping Rs 80,000 crore in current fiscal, excluding the government subsidies. The total book losses will reduce to around Rs 38,000 crore, with the subsidies inclusion, stated a report by ICRA. Of the total losses, about 70% has come from six states namely Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana.

The companies have so far been compensating these losses by either borrowings from the banks or stretched payments to power creditors, especially state-run generating companies. Nonetheless their credit quality has been questioned which has led to lesser number of banks willing to give them credit. As a result payments to power and fuel suppliers as well as debt repayments have been delayed.

The main reasons for these huge losses are the low tariffs and high Aggregate Technical and Commercial losses. Recently, the Appellate Tribunal of Electricity (ATE) asked state regulators to ensure time and cost-reflective tariff determination. Even though tariff increases have taken place in many states recently, the quantum of hikes is well below these discoms requirement to fully recover the costs, as per ICRA.

There are about 73 entities in the power distribution segment in the country. In December last year, the high-level Shunglu Committee’s report on Financial Position of Distribution Utilities came up with a raft of suggestions, including setting of a Special Purpose Vehicle to absorb the losses of discoms. It also said that net loss of 15 discoms - which account for over 90 per cent of country's power consumption and after subsidies was at Rs 27,000 crore for the year ended March 31, 2010.

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