Further, in the participating states, the Average Cost of Supply (ACS) minus Average Revenue Realized (ARR) gap has come down by almost 14 paise per kwh and the AT&C losses have reduced by almost 1 percentage point in FY 17.
Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) was launched in November, 2015 and has completed more than one year of operation. Participating states of UDAY have taken over the targeted debt of Rs.2.09 lakh crore (trillion) of their discoms under borrowing exemption from the FRBM Act given in UDAY for the years FY16 and FY17.
The process of states taking over the targeted debts and issuing them as SDL Bonds has now been completed. As of now, the participating discoms have to issue bonds worth approximately Rs.37,000 crores, which would be done in due course. Rest of the debt with discoms is mostly in the nature of CAPEX debt, which pays for itself, or it is scheme-based debt that converts into grants fully or partially. Thus, they are not required to be taken over by the states.
As per the provisions of UDAY Scheme, states would start taking over losses of discoms in a graded manner from now on, starting with taking over 5 per cent of the losses of FY17 from the current financial year. “Continued, concerted and coordinated efforts by the Centre, states and discoms, in the spirit of cooperative and competitive federalism, would help turn around the power distribution sector by FY19,” the release added.
As of September 30 2015, the effective date of the UDAY scheme, the total outstanding debt of all state discoms was Rs.3.95 trillion (lakh crore). As of now, the total outstanding debt that has come into the UDAY scheme is Rs.3.82 trillion. The debt that is to be taken over by the state government or which is to be issued as discom bonds is Rs.2.69 trillion. Till date, bonds worth Rs.2.32 trillion have been issued. This includes Rs.2.09 trillion as state government bonds and Rs.0.23 trillion as discom bonds, the release added.
