Free electricity: PSPCL may incur annual loss of Rs.4,000 crore

Patiala, December 28 (Gagandeep Ahuja): Good political gimmicks always take hefty toll on economics and free electricity by the Punjab government is one of such schemes. Punjab government fails to justify “zero bill” for electricity supply when the financial health of the PSPCL is dwindling. The scheme for every domestic consumer regardless of their economic status is affecting states exchequer badly. While consumers are trying to get more than one connection, the maximum power demand in December has increased by 1000 MW as compared to the corresponding period last year and daily supply has also increased by 150 lakh units from the last year.

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The Punjab Government has defaulted to the tune of  Rs. 4314 crores to PSPCL as on December 15 this year for the subsidies committed on account of free or subsidised power to various consumers.

The power subsidy of Rs.6396 crores for domestic  consumers.  The domestic subsidy as far as zero bill and rs. 3 per unit would be around Rs. 4000 crores. The number of zero bill domestic consumers has gone for the month of December till date has gone up to 90.07 percent and total  subsidised domestic consumers have gone up to 97.9 percent.

If one looks at the actual monthly subsidy for the last four months from August to November it is between Rs.522 to 732 crores. The average monthly bill works out to be Rs. 645 crores. This clearly indicates that the domestic power subsidy bill is going to increase by about 1000 crores.