Power corp looks up on slowdown: Revises Tariff
Yoginder Gupta
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 19
The economic meltdown has a silver lining; at least in the case of the Haryana Power General Corporation (HPGC).

The corporation has revised its tariff proposal for the next financial year from Rs 3.79 per kwh to Rs 3.11 per kwh.

It has cut its tariff drastically primarily because the global coal and oil prices have come down following the economic slowdown.

In its application filed before the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission (HERC) on October 30 last, the HPGC had demanded a tariff of Rs 3.79 per kwh against the average tariff of Rs 2.90 per kwh for its generation in the current financial year.

The main reason for the hefty increase in tariff for 2009-10 was that because of the shortage of domestic coal, the Union government had ordered the import of six lakh MT of coal, which comes to about 10 per cent of the total coal requirement by the Haryana power generating units.

Around October last, the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) had contacted with the State Trading Corporation (STC) for import of 5.25 million MT of coal at a rate of $182 MT.

In its wisdom, which has now proved right, the HPGC linked the price of coal with the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) notified index to reap the benefit of global recessionary trend. MD of the corporation Sanjeev Kaushal says it was also decided to link coal prices with the price index based on the CERC methodology so that consumers stand to benefit with future decline in coal prices. At present, the coal prices are about $100 MT.

The price of oil, which ranged from Rs 41,600 per KL to Rs 43,200 per KL for various kinds of oil used by the HPGC units, has come down to Rs 30,150 per KL to Rs 37,200 per KL.

Kaushal said the corporation had decided to pass this benefit in the reduction of fuel prices to the consumers in its revised tariff application.