In a bid to make up for the slump in revenue collections due to the lockdown, AP-Transco has appealed to domestic consumers to promptly pay their March bills (same amounts as paid for February) as the DISCOMs did not record individual meter readings.
The power utilities are heavily dependent on domestic consumers to stave off the crisis precipitated by the steep fall in demand from bulk consumers including the Railways and commercial establishments. This resulted in a massive decline in revenues.
Unpowered by lock down
Plus, a large number of consumers did not pay bills for February because of the lock down. To exacerbate they didn’t have online remittance facility either.
“The AP-Transco and DISCOMs have, therefore, are pinning their hopes on the domestic sector to come to their rescue,” said officials in the Energy Department, who pegged the number of households at 92.24 lakh out of the total 1.45 crore electricity consumers. The average short fall in the collections of DISCOMs stood at 36.73 per cent.
Fall in demand
The total sales of power fell to 4,500 Million Units (MU) in March from the expected 5,000 MU to 5,500 MU. If the present situation continues, sales are likely to drop to nearly 3,500 MU in April.
Energy Secretary N. Srikant requested the domestic consumers to make payments without any inordinate delays so that the AP-Transco will have funds for purchasing power, and the morale of the department is high in these tough times.
He pointed out that the daily electricity bill collections are utilized to pay bills to the power generators and coal suppliers and for debt servicing. “Any further decline in the revenue collections will severely affect the finances of the entire sector,” he averred.
