Central panel on discom debt restructuring to meet on January 9

07 Jan 2013 Evaluate

Planning Commission Member B K Chaturvedi headed meeting to oversee the massive debt restructuring scheme for ailing electricity distribution companies is scheduled on January 9. Representatives from Power and Finance Ministries as well as from some distribution companies among others will participate in the first meeting of a central panel for discussing concerns over power sector woes.

Measures mooted in debt restructuring scheme include significant tariff hikes and conversion of 50 per cent of their short-term debt into bonds backed by respective states, while one of the key proposals in the scheme is to ensure regular rationalization of tariff to cover cost of services. Low tariff is a major factor hurting the financials of discoms.

The accumulated losses of electricity distribution companies are estimated to be whopping Rs 2.46 lakh crore as on March 2012 and it was pegged at around Rs 1.9 lakh crore till March 2011.

Meanwhile, power ministry said that ‘the restructuring/re-scheduling of loan is to be accompanied by concrete and measurable action by the discoms/states to improve the operational performance of the distribution utilities.’ The Power Ministry had notified the financial restructuring scheme for state-owned discoms on October 5.

However, in the last 15 months, minimum 18 states have announced significant tariff increases during the period, with Tamil Nadu proposing as much as 37 per cent hike to improve the financial health of electricity distributing companies. The uncertain financial health of discoms has also raised concerns of loan defaults in the financial system.

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