TRIVANDRUM, 3 August — To bail out the ailing Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB), the state government yesterday effected an across the board hike of 25 percent in the power tariff. This would fetch an additional annual revenue of six billion rupees for the loss-making KSEB, which is making a revenue gap of 1.604 billion rupees every month at the current rates.
Chief Minister A.K. Antony who announced the Cabinet decision said KSEB’s current revenue gap demanded a hike by at least 60 percent but the government limited it to 25 percent for industrial and domestic consumers alike to avoid hardships. Domestic consumers using up to 20 units a month would continue to get free power. Old-age homes, schools and hostels of mentally-handicapped, deaf and dumb and physically handicapped are exempted from the hike that will take effect from Aug. 10.
The Cabinet has asked the power secretary to submit proposals within 15 days to set up a tariff regulatory commission and profit centers within three months. The KSEB requires a minimum of 20 billion rupees to make up its losses but the government did not want to impose heavy burden on the people in one go, the chief minister said.
A differential price system is proposed for high tension consumers to bring down the peak-time requirement by 20 percent, fixing normal rates from 06:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., an extra rate from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. and an incentive rate from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
All paddy cultivators irrespective of the extent of their land-holding and other cultivators having up to two hectares of land-holdings would continue to get free power. As part of improving the service and reducing cost, the KSEB would take steps to reduce transmission and distribution loss, pilferage and replacing of defective meters, Antony said.
The government also decided to withdraw the recently introduced half-an-hour load-shedding decision during the peak hours.
