Relief for power firms: Govt asks Aptel to crack down on ‘regulatory assets’

With the government planning to improve finances of the state-owned power distribution companies (discoms) to equip them for supplying 24×7 electricity, the power ministry has written to the Appellate Tribunal For Electricity (Aptel), asking it to direct the state electricity regulators not to create any further ‘regulatory assets’— a jargon for recoverable discom expenses which regulators acknowledge as pass-through costs, but are not immediately built into tariffs.

These ‘regulatory assets’ currently stand at around Rs 1.35 lakh crore and about half of these were created since the launch of the Uday scheme in FY16. According to official sources, regulatory assets in Maharashtra went up 390% to Rs 12,382 crore since the Uday launch and Uttar Pradesh saw a rise of 25% to Rs 33,000 crore in this period.