Published On : Wed, Jul 1st, 2015

Power tariff cut by Mah is a welcome step : VIA

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Nagpur: Although the recent fixation of electricity tariff has resulted in increasing the electricity rates by 60 paise per unit for industry, it nevertheless has decreased the gap between electricity rates of Maharashtra and Chhhattisgarh from 3 to 2.30 per unit and that is a clear indication that state government is making serious efforts to provide relief to industry, said the president of Vidarbha Industries Association, Atul Pande here on Tuesday.

Addressing a press conference Pande said that the effective rate for industry would work out to 7.21 for continuous process industries and to 6.71 for non continuous process industries.

The rates have come down to this level from earlier 8.16 Pande explained. Member of Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC), R B Goenka and former VIA presidents, Pravin Tapadia and Prafull Doshi also were present on the occasion.
For domestic consumers, the MERC has retained the BPL category and also created two new catagories of those consuming between 0 and 75 units and 75 to 125 units per month.

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For BPL category the rate of electricity would be 0.87, a drop from one per unit. Now, the effective rate would 4.16 and for 75 to 125 units it would be 5.55 per unit.

Explaining the salient features of the MERC order, Goenka said the regulatory body has reduced the power factor incentive, prompt payment discount and load factor incentive for industrial consumers. This was a big relief, but it was offset by reduction in night time rebate from 2.50 to 1.50.

On the other hand, the MERC has raised the cross subsidy surcharge for Open Access consumers from 1.18 to 1.49 per unit and for non express feeder consumers it was raised from 0.76 to 1.09 per unit.

This would not affect the general industrial consumers, Goenka said.

The chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and energy minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule both have announced to bring electricity rates at par with Chhattisgarh in next two years and the tariff fixation that has been announced recently clearly establishes that the government is marching in the right direction, Goenka said while concluding.