NEW DELHI: The Centre’s liquidity assistance package to power distribution companies has worked to mitigate the accumulation of debt over the past three quarters, but it has not led to a reduction. According to the Ministry of Power’s PRAAPTI portal, India’s discoms saw their dues to power generators rise to Rs 1.30 lakh crore by the end of November 2020, a massive 37.38 per cent higher than November 2019’s Rs 95,127 crore and 2.16 per cent higher than October 2020’s Rs 1,27,951 crore.
Under the Centre’s assistance programme announced in May, discoms were to be granted loans from state-run financiers PFC and REC worth Rs 1.2 lakh crore. As of the end of September 2020, the two had sanctioned loans worth Rs 1.18 lakh crore, of which Rs 31,100 crore had already been disbursed to 11 states. This assistance has been paralleled by a sharp rise in discoms’ monthly payments to gencos.
