In what could be a big jolt to public sector power companies, the Centre has directed state governments to encourage entry of private players in transmission and distribution networks. The Centre noted that private players would not only bring investments to the sector but also lower costs, helping consumers to benefit. The Centre\u2019s advice is creating ripples in the energy sector in the state.<\/p>\n
In a letter to chief secretaries, Mritunjay Kr Narayan, joint secretary to the Union government (power ministry), has noted that Tariff Based Competitive Bidding (TBCB) adopted for inter-state power transmission has helped save huge monies to the exchequer. \u201cIt has been observed that competitive bidding has brought tariff down by 40 per cent thanks to the participation of a large number of bidders,\u201d said Narayan. He explained that it has lessened the burden on the government and attract private investments for taking up developmental projects in the sector.<\/p>\n
Narayan said that the scarce funds could be utilized for other priority programmes. The TBCB would also encourage risk sharing with private sector and encourages bringing in advanced and new technologies to the sector. He, however, said that it is high-time for the state governments to switch to the new method in intra-state transmission as major share in the transmission sector is from intra-state. He said that state should take the success lessons from the TBCB adopted in the inter-state transmission for intra-state transmission.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt effectively lessens the burden on the state governments if they can move over to the TBCB system in the intra-state transmission,\u201d said Narayan. He said that such measures would also help consumers to benefit as lower tariffs would enable state governments to bring down retail tariff. \u201cIn the larger interests of the consumers, it is strongly recommended that the state governments should adopt Tariff Based Competitive Bidding (TBCB) immediately,\u201d the joint secretary said.<\/p>\n
Narayan said that Electricity Act, 2003 has provides conducive environment for investments in all segments of electricity sector by removing the barrier to entry different sectors. He said that Section 63 of the Act provides for participation of private sector on competitive basis in different segments so as to encourage private investment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Centre\u2019s decision to force the state governments to go allow the private firms into transmission sector is nothing but going for privatization of entire transmission and distribution companies. This is what we have been apprehending about for the past several months since the Centre amended the Electricity Act,\u201d said a senior engineer of AP Transco. He said that entry of private players would not help reduce the tariff but increase them multifold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In what could be a big jolt to public sector power companies, the Centre has directed state governments to encourage entry of private players in transmission and distribution networks. The Centre noted that private players would not only bring investments to the sector but also lower costs, helping consumers to benefit. The Centre\u2019s advice is creating ripples in the energy sector in the state. In a letter to chief secretaries, Mritunjay Kr Narayan, joint secretary to the Union government (power ministry), has noted that Tariff Based Competitive Bidding (TBCB) adopted for inter-state power transmission has helped save huge monies to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-405865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-power"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}